GILBERT  ROY  OWEN 
HABET 


/: 


o 


THE  CORNER  OF   HARLEY    STREET 


THE    CORNER 
OF  HARLEY  STREET 

BEING  SOME  FAMILIAR 
CORRESPONDENCE  OF 
PETER  HARDING.  M.D. 


BOSTON   AND   NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN   COMPANY 


CONTENTS 


i 

To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S.,  PACE 

Applebrook,  Devon       .         .         .     March  4th  9 

II 

To  Horace  Harding, 

Trinity  College,  Cambridge    .         .     March  nth       20 

III 

To  Miss  Josephine  Summers, 

The  Cottage,  Potham,  Beds  .         .     March  I4th       32 

IV 
To  Colonel  R.  F.  Morris,  C.B., 

7th  Division,  Meerut,  India  .         .     March  1 5th        34 

V 
To  Hugh  Pontrex, 

Villa  Rosa,  Mentone    .         .         .     March  23rd       45 

VI 
To  Miss  Sarah  Harding, 

The  Orphanage,  Little  Blessington, 

Dorset March  jist       55 

VII 
To  Harry  Carthew, 

Trenant  Hotel,  Leeds  .         .         .     April  8th  66 

5 


21,30044 


6  Contents 

VIII 

To  John  Summers,  M.B., 

At    Actonhurst,    Granville    Road,  TAGE 

Bristol     .          .         .  '       .          .     April  iath         71 

IX 
To  Harry  Carthew, 

Trenant  Hotel,  Leeds  .         .     April  1 5th         78 

X 

To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding, 

S.  Peter's  College,  Morecambe  Bay     April  zoth         79 

XI 
To  Miss  Josephine  Summers, 

The  Cottage,  Potham,  Beds  .          .     April  22nd         87 

XII 
To  Tom  Harding, 

c/o  the  Rev.  Arthur  Jakes,  Rugby  .     April  24th         88 

XIII 
To  Hugh  Pontrex, 

Villa  Rosa,  Mentone     .         .         .     May  3rd  95 

XIV 

To  Miss  Molly  Harding, 

9 IB,  Harley  Street,  W.          .         .     May  6th  109 

XV 

To  Miss  Josephine  Summers, 

The  Cottage,  Potham,  Beds  .     May  1 6th         1 1 6 


Contents  j 

XVI 
To  Lady  Wroxton, 

The  Manor  House,  Stoke  Magna,  txci 

Oxon May  23rd        118 

XVII 
To  Miss  Sarah  Harding, 

The  Orphanage,  Little  Blessington, 

Dorset     .....     June  7th  127 

XVIII 
To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S., 

Applebrook,  Devon       .         .         .     June  25th         151 

XIX 
To  Hugh  Pontrex, 

Hotel  Montana,  Biarritz        .         .     July  1 6th         157 

XX 

To  Horace  Harding, 

c/o   Major   Alec    Cameron,    Glen 

Bruisk,  Sutherland,  N.B.  .         .     Aug.  i7th         166 

XXI 

To  Miss  Josephine  Summers, 

The  Cottage,  Potham,  Beds  .         .     Aug.  25th       177 

XXII 

To  Reginald  Pole, 

S.Y.  Nautilus,  Harwich         .         .     Aug.  3010        179 

XXIII 

To  Miss  Sarah  Harding, 

The  Orphanage,  Little  Blessington, 

Dorset     .....     Sept.  6th  195 


8  Contents 

XXIV 

To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding,  **« 

S.  Peter's  College,  Morecambe  Bay     Sept.  i^th        202 

XXV 
To  Hugh  Pontrex, 

Villa  Rosa,  Mentone    .         .         .     Oct.  jrd          219 

XXVI 

To  John  Summers,  M.B., 

c/o   the    Rev.  W.  B.  La  Touche, 

High  Barn,  Winchester     .          .     Oct.  i8th         231 

XXVII 

To  Miss  Sarah  Harding, 

The  Orphanage,  Little  Blessington, 

Dorset Nov.  yth          242 

XXVIII 
To  Miss  Josephine  Summers, 

The  Cottage,  Potham,  Beds  .         .     Nov.  2  6th       249 

XXXIX 
To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding, 

S.  Peter's  College,  Morecambe  Bay     Dec.  2nd         25  i 

XXX 

To  Hugh  Pontrex, 

Villa  Rosa,  Mentone     .         ,         .     Dec.  25th         255 


The  (Corner  of  Harley  Street 


To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S.,  Afplebrook,  Devon. 

9  IB,  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

March  4,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  BOB, 

Your  letter  of  this  morning,  like  the  cream 
that  it  was,  rose  naturally  to  the  surface  of  the 
little  pile  of  correspondence  that  awaited  me  on 
the  breakfast-table  ;  and  if  I  didn't  read  it  then, 
and  am  only  answering  it  now,  in  front  of  my 
dressing-room  fire,  there  are  more  reasons  than 
one  for  this.  You  might  even  detect  a  little 
pathos,  perhaps,  in  the  chief  of  these.  For  I 
can't  help  feeling  that  a  younger  man — myself, 
for  example,  twenty  years  ago — would  have  been 
into  it  before  you  could  say  scalpel,  snatching  his 
joy  as  one  of  your  own  parr  will  take  a  Wickham 
on  a  clear  pool  before  the  half-pounder  beside 
him  has  even  decided  to  inspect  it.  And  if  I 
have  not  done  this,  if  I  have  learned  the  better 
way,  the  art  of  lingering,  the  value  of  the  "  bou- 


i  o  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

quet,"  well,  there's  a  rather  forlorn  piece  of  scalp 
in  the  opposite  looking-glass  to  tell  me  the  reason 
why. 

So  you  see  that  I  didn't  rush  headlong  at  youi 
letter,  tearing  it  open  with  a  feverish,  if  mature, 
forefinger.  I  even  ignored  the  twinkle  in  my 
wife's  eye,  and  the  more  impertinent  expression 
that  Miss  Molly  was  permitting  to  rest  upon  her 
usually  calm  features. 

"  Another  lump,  my  pet,"  was  all  I  said,  and 
stirred  my  coffee  with  that  inscrutable  calm  so 
justly  associated  with  Destiny,  Wisdom,  and  the 
Consulting  Physician. 

"  He's  pretending  not  to  be  excited,"  explained 
Miss  Molly  to  a  college  friend  across  the  table ; 
and  Claire,  all  chestnut  mop  and  black-stockinged 
legs  (and  convalescent,  by  the  way,  from  the 
mumps),  gurgled  suddenly  over  her  Henty  when 
she  ought  by  rights  to  have  been  completely 
breathless. 

Through  the  open  window  a  pleasant  breeze 
stirred  lazily  across  the  table,  decked  with  its 
stolen  sweets  from  our  own  and  our  neighbours' 
hyacinths.  And  in  a  welcome  sunshine  the 
windows  of  Sir  Jeremy's  consulting-room  beamed 
as  merrily  as  their  owner's  eyes. 

"  And  not  even  one  spark  of  enthusiasm,"  pro- 


To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S.  n 

ceeded  Molly.  "  Oh,  who  would  have  a  mere 
physician  for  a  parent  ?  " 

"  For  the  elderly,"  I  told  her,  "  excitement  is 
to  be  deprecated.  Now  if  I  were  twenty-four, 
perhaps " 

"  Twenty-three,"  put  in  Molly,  adding,  with 
very  great  distinctness,  "  to-morrow." 

"  And  that  reminds  me,"  murmured  Claire 
from  her  sofa  under  the  window. 

So  I  opened  the  other  envelopes  first,  those 
that  contained  the  bills,  the  appointments,  the 
invitations,  and  the  unpleasant  letters,  just  as  a 
wise  man  should,  who  is  at  his  best,  and  realizes 
it,  tubbed  and  shaved  and  over  his  breakfast 
bacon.  And  since  Molly  and  her  friend  appeared 
to  have  interrupted  themselves  in  the  midst  of 
some  earnest  political  discussion,  I  begged  them 
to  resume  this.  For  in  making  the  breakfast- 
table  their  judgment-bar  they  were  setting  an 
example,  as  I  reminded  them,  that  the  world 
would  do  well  to  follow.  Breakfast-table  verdicts, 
breakfast-table  sermons,  bieakfast-table  laws,  for 
true  and  kindly  sanity  they  might  be  safely 
backed,  I  observed,  against  any  product  of  the 
midnight  oil  that  has  emerged  from  the  brain  of 
man — including  even  woman  as  produced  by 
Newnham  ;  or  so,  at  any  rate,  thought  a  middle- 


12  The   Corner  of  Harley  Street 

aged  physician  whose  opinions  were  dear  to  me. 
Only,  of  course,  it  would  have  to  be  a  well- 
furnished  table  ;  and  the  marmalade,  if  possible, 
should  have  been  made  at  home. 

"  You  had  better  just  $ance  at  it  though, 
hadn't  you  ?  "  asked  Esther — dear,  wise  Esther — 
from  her  throne  behind  the  urn  ;  after  which 
there  was  quite  obviously  nothing  else  to  be  done. 
Applebrook — glorious  postmark — it  had  already 
begun  to  weave  its  magic  for  me  as  I  slipped  a 
knife  into  the  comfortable  envelope,  and  ran  a 
well-mastered  eye  over  its  contents. 

"  Nothing  of  importance,"  I  announced ; 
"  only  fish." 

"  Only  fish,"  scoffed  Molly,  well  into  her  third 
muffin. 

And  yet,  though  I  have  not  actually  read  it  till 
just  now — my  sacred  ten  minutes  before  the 
dinner-gong  summons  me  downstairs — your  letter 
has  really  followed  me  all  day,  even  as  Apple- 
brook  itself  will  follow  a  returning  angler  down 
the  evening  moor,  and  ripple  through  his  after- 
supper  dreams.  It  has  blessed  me,  and  made  a 
dull  day  bright  (for  the  sun  began  to  sulk  again 
at  noon),  and  the  more  so  because  my  wisdom 
kept  it  at  a  distance  until  just  now.  Applebrook 
— as  I  emerged  from  the  District  Railway  into 


To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S.  13 

that  faint  but  inexorable  smell  of  burnt  coffee 
*nd  human  unwashedness  which  broods  over 
Whitechapel  Road,  the  extra  bulge  in  my  breast- 
pocket reminded  me  suddenly  of  wind-blown 
gorse  and  all  the  hard-bitten,  sunburnt  heath 
that  stands  for  Dartmoor.  My  step  quickened. 
I  entered  the  hospital  gates  with  a  jauntier  tread, 
and  could  have  sworn  that  a  silver  trout  shot 
spectrally  round  the  corner  in  front  of  me.  A 
poor  presage  for  my  lucidity  in  the  afternoon 
march  round  the  wards,  I  can  hear  you  murmur. 
But  you  are  wrong  there.  For,  on  the  contrary, 
the  points  of  my  discourse  made  their  bows  to 
my  memory  with  unwonted  briskness ;  and  I 
contrived,  I  think,  to  keep  the  notebook-pencils 
pretty  busy. 

Yet  the  afternoon  did  contain  one  of  those 
disquieting  surprises  that  used  at  one  time  to 
seem  so  catastrophic,  and  now  appear  only  too 
wonderfully  uncommon.  For  some  weeks  past 
I  have  had  a  poor  fellow  in  one  of  my  beds,  a 
cheerful  soul,  for  all  he  knew  himself  to  be  tread- 
ing a  downhill  road.  His  condition,  rather  an 
obscure  one,  and  in  any  event  incurable,  might 
have  represented  one  of  two  causes.  Week  by 
week,  to  a  respectful  and  intelligent  body  of 
students,  I  have  demonstrated  the  signs  and  symp- 


14  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

toms  of  this  patient,  and  proved  to  them  how,  on 
the  whole,  they  must  be  taken  to  indicate  B — 
shall  we  say  ? — as  the  root  of  the  mischief.  And 
now  to-day,  before  an  expectant  gathering,  the 
uncompromising  knife  of  the  pathologist  in  the 
post-mortem  room  has  revealed  the  precisely  op- 
posite. It  was  A  all  the  time,  and  there  was 
nothing  for  it  but  to  accept  defeat,  and  retire 
strategically  in  as  good  an  order  as  might  be. 
There  was,  at  any  rate,  the  consolation  that  the 
mistake  could  not  have  affected  the  unhappy  issue 
of  the  malady.  It  was  merely  a  sort  of  academic 
pride  that  was  to  suffer  ;  and  I  suppose  it  is  only 
an  acquired  familiarity  with  death  that  could  have 
made  so  small  a  personal  disaster  even  imaginable 
— for  I  don't  think  it  ever  really  became  actual — 
under  its  great  shadow.  So  I  made  my  retreat — 
in  fair  order,  I  believe,  with  baggage  intact  and  a 
minimum  of  casualties.  Nevertheless  I  caught 
young  Martyn,  the  wing  three,  you  know — what 
wouldn't  I  have  given  for  his  swerve  thirty  years 
ago  ! — smiling  significantly  across  at  your  son, 
who  was  very  tactfully  endeavouring  to  appear 
oblivious.  And  it  was  Applebrook  that  fortified 
my  powers  of  forgiveness — Applebrook  rippling 
peacefully  over  its  immemorial  granite. 

And  so  there's  plenty  of  water,  is  there,  and 


To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S.  15 

the  colour  has  been  just  right  ?  And  you  have 
already  been  into  a  pounder,  and  landed  him  too. 
That's  good,  for  though  we  miss  a  lot  of  pounders 
in  Applebrook — "  a  pound,  sir,  if  it  weighed  an 
ounce,  and  took  half  the  cast  away  with  it  " — 
we  seldom  land  one.  And  am  I  game  to  come 
down  on  May  1st  as  usual  ? 

A  day-dream,  or  dusk-dream,  has  been  inter- 
rupted here — I  might  have  prophesied  it — by 
one  of  those  earnest,  cadaverous  persons  whose 
pride  it  is  that  they  have  never  taken — never 
felt  the  need  of  it,  they  usually  add — a  holiday 
in  their  lives. 

"  Not  for  thirty-five  years,  sir,"  said  this  latest 
specimen  to  me  just  now,  rubbing  his  hands  with 
counting-house  pride. 

"  God  help  you,"  I  replied,  which  took  him 
aback  a  little,  and  was  not,  I  admit,  a  tactful 
welcome  to  a  prospective  two  guineas.  But  then, 
you  see,  he  had  fetched  me  back  from  a  dusk- 
dream. 

"  Does  that  mean  you  can't  ?  "  he  inquired 
a  little  acidly.  And  really  I  should  not  have 
been  quite  so  abrupt  with  him,  for  his  confession 
gave  me  the  right  cue  to  his  treatment.  A  holi- 
day, in  fact,  was  all  that  he  needed,  though  I 
doubted  his  ability  to  use  one.  So  I  assumed 


1 6  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

my  heaviest  manner,  as  one  must  when  it  is  to 
be  unaccompanied  by  an  expensive  prescription. 

"  If  you  don't  take  one,"  I  proceeded  to  tell 
him,  "  though  you  will  probably  survive  with  the 
aid  of  iron,  arsenic,  and  an  occasional  Seidlitz 
powder,  you  will  become  eventually  like  those 
sorrowful  civil  servants  that  may  be  met  at 
almost  any  time  in  Somerset  House  or  the  General 
Post  Office.  They  have  been  pensioned  for 
months,  but  there  they  are,  unable  to  inter  them- 
selves decently  among  the  mashies  and  geraniums 
of  Wimbledon  and  Weybridge,  haunting  their 
former  desks,  poor  forlorn  creatures,  whose  one 
bond  of  life  has  been  severed — a  torture  to  them- 
selves and  their  successors." 

While  I  was  taking  breath  after  this  rather  im- 
pressive harangue,  he  stared  at  me  gloomily. 

"  It  has  always,"  he  said,  "  been  my  one  great 
desire  to  die  in  harness." 

After  congratulating  him  on  the  possession  of 
so  modest,  if  somewhat  cheerless,  an  ambition,  I 
asked  him  why  he  had  come  to  see  me.  A 
physician,  to  a  man  with  such  a  goal,  seemed,  on 
the  face  of  it,  something  of  a  superfluity.  But  I 
learned  that  there  was  a  wife  at  home,  poor  soul. 
And  it  was  her  doctor,  he  said,  who  had  recom- 
mended this  visit. 


To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S.          17 

"  And  I  may  tell  you,"  he  added,  "  that  your 
opinion  coincides  with  theirs."  He  handed  me 
his  two  guineas.  "  Where  shall  I  go  ?  "  he  asked. 

By  now  of  course  I  could  see  that  my  advice 
was  going  to  be  useless ;  but  there  was  no  better 
alternative. 

"  Have  you  any  hobbies  ?  "  I  inquired.  But 
he  shook  his  head.  No  ;  he  had  never  had  time 
for  hobbies.  And  by  to-morrow  afternoon  he 
will  be  reading  his  Financial  News  on  Brighton 
Pier,  and  wondering  when  he  can  decently  return. 


But  the  dressing-gong  has  sounded  already, 
and  the  embers  in  my  fire  are  reddening  into 
darkness.  Outside,  the  wheels  of  a  myriad  motor- 
cars and  carriages  pass  ceaselessly,  and  repass ;  and 
from  beyond  and  beneath  them,  through  the  open 
window,  comes  the  roar  of  London.  I  believe 
you  sigh  for  it  sometimes,  don't  you,  down  there 
among  your  moorland  silences  ?  Give  me  three 
weeks  of  it  a  year,  and,  as  far  as  I  am  concerned, 
you  might  monopolise  the  orchestra  for  the  other 
forty-nine.  I  don't  particularly  want  my  dinnei, 
and  I  am  still  less  inclined  to  talk  amiably  with 
the  two  dull,  but  worthy,  guests — may  the  gods 
of  hospitality  forgive  me — who  are  to  sit  at  our 


1 8  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

board  to-night.  With  the  tired  girl-poet,  I  am 
praying  instead  ; 

God,  for  the  little  streams  that  tumble  as  they  run. 

For  there  are  times  when  I  think  that  the  best 
thing  about  Harley  Street  is  that  there  are  exactly 
twelve  ways  out  of  it,  and  this,  I  think,  is  one 
of  them. 

If  to-morrow  now  were  only  the  1st  of  May, 
and  that  doorstep  of  mine  opened  into  Padding- 
ton,  cheeriest  of  railway  stations.  By  the  way, 
somebody  ought  to  write  an  essay  on  the  Per- 
sonality of  Railway  Stations.  Liverpool  Street, 
for  example,  smokes  cheap  cigarettes,  and  lives  at 
Walthamstow — does  its  baggage  up  with  string, 
and  takes  dribbly  children  to  Clacton-on-Sea. 
And  Paddington  is  a  sun-tanned  country  squire, 
riding  a  good  thirteen  stone,  and  with  an  eye  for 
an  apple.  His  luggage  is  of  a  well-ripened 
leather,  and  he  is  a  bit  lavish  with  his  tips. 


But,  alas,  my  door  merely  opens  to  admit  the 
timid  nose  of  a  new  maid  who  announces  the 
arrival  of  the  visitors.  Dressing-gowns  must  be 
shed,  and  tails  donned.  I  am  grasping  your  hairy 
brown  hand.  Can  you  feel  it  ? 


To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S.  19 

"  Lucky  dog,"  I  am  saying  to  you,  "  the  wind's 
up-stream,  and  the  trout  are  hungry,  and  for  all 
your  scattered  practice  you  can  still  nip  down 
for  one  perfect  hour  to  Marleigh  Pool — still  feel 
your  rod-point  bending  to  some  heaven-sent 
troutling  of  the  true  fighting  stock."  Will  I 
come  ?  Won't  I  !  And  till  then  I  can  merely 
remain  London-bound. 

Your  envious  old  friend, 

P.  H. 


II 

To  Horace  Harding,  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 

913  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

March  II,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  HORACE, 

Casting  a  remorseful  eye  at  the  date  upon 
your  letter,  I  perceive  that  it  is  already  almost  a 
week  since  I  resolved  to  sit  down,  and  answer  it 
immediately ;  and  the  postscript  that  follows 
"  your  aff.  son  H."  gazes  at  me  with  a  rebuking 
stare,  as  if  to  remind  me  how  very  far  I  have 
been  from  bucking  up,  as  you  so  tactfully  sug- 
gested, and  flooring  the  problem  with  which  you 
have  presented  me.  And  yet  you  mustn't  sup- 
pose that  I  have  been  altogether  too  careless  or 
too  busy  to  deal  with  it  as  you  wished.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  have  been  dodging  it  round  the 
ring  of  everyday  happenings  ever  since  I  first 
beheld  it  eyeing  me  beneath  the  Trinity  crest. 
For  the  fact  of  the  matter  is,  my  dear  Horace, 
that  your  revered  Daddy  has  all  along  been  more 
than  doubtful  about  his  ability  to  stretch  the 
fellow  on  the  carpet.  And  now,  at  the  end  of  a 

20 


To  Horace  Harding  21 

week's  somewhat  cowardly — footwork,  shall  we 
call  it  ? — he  has  decided  to  crawl  under  the 
ropes,  and  make  room  for  a  lustier  substitute. 

Shall  you  become  a  doctor  ?  Well,  I'm  afraid, 
after  all,  that  you  must  tackle  the  question  for 
yourself.  As  an  American  patient,  with  a  doubt- 
ful liver,  observed  to  me  this  morning,  the  prob- 
lem is  right  up  against  you ;  and  nobody  else  can 
defeat  it  in  your  stead.  The  thought  of  this  has 
cheered  me  so  amazingly  that  from  now  onwards 
you  may  safely  imagine,  I  think,  an  almost 
contented  physician,  sitting  plumply  in  a  front 
stall,  smiling  at  the  fight  over  contemplative 
finger-tips,  and  merely  tendering,  between  the 
rounds,  some  well-worn  pieces  of  ring-side 
advice. 

And  so  the  peaks  are  challenging  you,  eh  ? 
The  wig,  the  gaiters,  the  gold  pince-nez,  and  the 
bedside  manner,  they  have  risen  up  to  bid  you 
choose  your  future  path.  For  twenty-two  years, 
you  tell  me,  you  haven't  greatly  disturbed  your- 
self about  these  things.  You  have  accepted 
parental  orders :  you  have  taken,  in  consequence, 
a  respectable,  if  not  distinguished,  degree  in 
classics ;  you  have  mastered  enough  science  to 
rob  your  "  first  medical "  of  most  of  its  fears ; 
and  you  have  obtained,  by  the  way,  a  Rugger 


22  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

"  blue,"  of  which  you  are,  no  doubt,  a  great  deal 
more  proud.  And  now  that  all  this  has  been 
accomplished  you  turn  to  your  former  guide, 
and  say  to  him,  "  Whither  away  ?  "  And  like 
Gilbert's  poor  wit,  I  feel  inclined  to  retort  very 
truthfully  that  I  do  indeed  wither  away.  Be- 
hold, I  have  vanished.  The  mountain  range  is 
before  you.  Choose  your  summit. 


As  if  to  point  a  moral,  I  have  been  here  inter- 
rupted by  a  pitiful  voice  over  the  telephone. 
Indeed  for  a  week  past,  I  have  been  its  victim  at 
varying  intervals.  For  Mrs.  Cholmondeley,  let 
us  call  her,  cannot  make  up  her  mind  between  the 
rival  hygienic  attractions  of  Cannes  and  Torquay. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  Camberwell  or  Camden  Town 
would  be  equally,  probably  more,  effectual.  Or- 
ganically she  is  perfectly  sound.  For  the  rest  she 
is  merely  over-fed  and  under-occupied.  She  has 
deleted  very  nearly  every  healthful  activity  from 
her  list  of  physical  employments.  And  now 
those  of  her  will  are  to  be  similarly  abandoned ; 
delegated  to  paid  assistants  like  myself. 

Cannes  or  Torquay  ?  Well,  I  have  refused  the 
responsibility  of  deciding.  In  league  with  her 
long-suffering  family  physician,  I  am  endeavour- 


To  Horace  Harding  23 

ing  to  force  her  faculties  to  make  this  little 
effort  by  themselves.  For  I  doubt  if  the 
sorrowful  gates  of  illness  behold  anything  more 
entirely  pitiable  than  the  spectacle  of  a  will 
on  crutches. 

Well  then,  having,  as  you  see,  completely 
foisted  the  ultimate  issue  upon  your  own  shoul- 
ders, it  seems  to  me  that  there  are  three  main 
standpoints  from  which  you  must  regard  our 
profession  before  finally  deciding  to  embark  upon 
it.  To  take  the  least  important  of  these  first, 
you  must  bear  in  mind,  I  think,  that  while  you 
should  undoubtedly  be  able  to  pay  your  way,  and 
to  make  an  honest  living,  yet  the  financial  rewards 
that  medicine  has  to  offer  are  scarcely  worth  con- 
sidering. Given  an  equal  amount  of  capital, 
both  in  brain-power  and  pounds  sterling,  your 
hours  of  work,  your  expenditure  of  energy,  your 
capacity  for  diagnosis  and  research,  your  readi- 
ness at  the  reading  of  human  nature,  would  bring 
you  a  far  greater  return  of  this  world's  goods  in 
almost  any  other  occupation  that  you  care  to 
name — incomparably  so  in  commerce.  At  the 
same  time  I  don't  think  that  this  point  of  view 
will  detain  you  very  long ;  because,  however 
little  fathers  may  really  know  of  their  own  sons 
(and  the  sum  of  parental  ignorance  under  this 


24  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

heading  must  be  something  rather  stupendous),  I 
am  quite  sure  that  the  financial  laurel,  'per  set 
has  no  overwhelming  attraction  for  you. 

Having  deigned  then  to  consider  the  problem 
from  this  lowest  and  most  sordid  standpoint,  you 
should  shift  your  ground,  I  think,  and  reflect 
upon  it  from  the  midmost  of  my  three  Pisgahs, 
the  scientific  one.  If  I  haven't  led  you  to  this 
first,  it  is  because  you  have  probably  scrambled 
up  it  already,  and  paid  no  attention  at  all  to  the 
one  that  I  have  just  recommended  to  you.  And 
in  a  sense  your  instinct  will  perhaps  have  taken 
you  by  a  straighter  route  to  the  heart  of  thi? 
matter  than  that  which  your  more  prudent  parent 
has  indicated.  Because  ultimately  it  is  from  this 
point  that  you  will  have  to  make  your  final  de- 
cision. You  must  ask  yourself,  with  all  the 
earnestness  of  a  novice  at  his  altar-vigil,  "  Am 
I  prepared  to  know  ?  " 

For  the  long  day  of  the  charlatan  and  the  quack 
is  drawing  at  last  to  its  close,  and  their  sun  is  even 
now  setting  in  a  blaze  of  patent-medicine  ad- 
vertisements. Modern  Europe  has  almost  ceased 
to  be  possible  for  the  would-be  Paracelsus ;  even 
America  will  not  contain  him,  I  think,  for  very 
much  longer.  And  through  a  dissolving  mist  of 
white  spats  and  atrocious  Latin  the  eyes  of 


Horace  Harding  25 


humanity  are  turning  slowly,  but  very  surely,  to- 
wards the  man  who  knows.  Are  you  prepared  to 
become  such  a  man  ? 

I  fancy  that  I  can  see  your  forehead  wrinkling 
a  little  here  ;  so  let  me  explain  myself  in  a 
parable.  There  is  an  old  story,  familiar  in  the 
hospitals,  of  a  bygone  practitioner  whose  simple 
habit  it  was  to  tie  a  piece  of  string  about  the 
waist  of  his  patient.  He  would  then  ask  the 
sufferer  to  locate  the  pain.  If  this  were  above 
the  string  he  administered  an  emetic,  if  below  a 
purgative  ;  while  if  the  pain  and  the  string 
coincided,  the  unhappy  victim  would  receive 
both.  Now  it  is  melancholy  to  reflect  that  this 
gentleman  has  never  been  without  disciples. 
And  yet  how  difficult  at  times  may  it  become  to 
avoid  such  a  fate.  Are  you  prepared  to  avoid 
it? 

Let  me  put  the  question  in  yet  another  shape. 
Some  day  a  patient  will  come  to  you  —  you  may 
be  quite  certain  that  he  will  —  at  the  end  of  a 
long  round  or  an  exhausting  afternoon  at  hospital  ; 
will  complain  to  you  of  his  lamentable  depression 
of  spirits,  his  entire  loss  of  appetite,  his  slight  but 
continual  headache  ;  and  will  show  you,  in  con- 
firmation of  these  symptoms,  nothing  graver,  let 
us  say,  than  a  dull  eye  and  a  yellowish  tongue. 


26  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

You  will  be  tired ;  you  will  see  at  a  glance  that 
his  subjective  troubles  are  altogether  dispropor- 
tionate to  the  objective  gravity  of  his  complaint, 
and  perhaps  justifiably  you  will  send  him  away 
happy,  or  at  any  rate  contented,  in  the  belief 
that  he  is  a  bit  "  liverish."  But  are  you  going 
to  allow  "  liverish  "  to  satisfy  yourself  ?  "  Of 
course  not,"  you  reply ;  and  yet,  believe  me, 
my  son,  it  will  be  a  very  real  temptation.  Why 
bother,  at  a  long  day's  end,  to  worry  your  tired 
faculties  into  presenting  to  your  mind  as  exact 
a  mental  picture  of  the  man's  actual  condition 
as  they  can  draw  ?  Nevertheless,  unless  you  do 
this,  you  will  be  treating  him  with  less  respect 
than  your  old  bicycle  in  the  coach-house ;  as 
though,  if  it  should  creak  or  wheeze  or  begin  to 
run  less  smoothly,  you  would  merely  tell  yourself 
that  it  was  "  wheelish,"  and  drop  oil  at  random 
into  its  most  convenient  aperture.  Do  you  begin 
to  see  what  I  am  driving  at  ? 

And  then  you  will  probably  turn  upon  me  and 
say,  "  But  to  cultivate  this  habit  of  forming 
proper  mental  pictures,  I  shall  have  to  be  at  least 
a  chemist,  a  physicist,  a  pathologist,  a  bacteri- 
ologist, to  say  nothing  of  a  philosopher  ;  and  how 
can  a  single  human  being,  however  industrious, 
contain  as  many  persons  as  these  \  "  And  of  course 


70  Horace  Harding  27 

he  cannot.  Upon  no  more  than  one  branch  of 
the  tree  of  Healing  will  it  be  given  to  you  to 
climb  out  a  little  farther  than  your  fellows ;  but, 
at  any  rate,  you  can  keep  your  eye  upon  the  others. 
It  is  in  this  way  alone  that  you  can  become  a 
scientific  physician  in  the  best  and  broadest  sense. 
And  you  can  take  my  word  for  it  that  it  will  never 
be  worth  your  while  to  become  any  other  sort  of 
a  sawbones — an  exacting  prospect  ?  I  agree  with 
you.  And  many  an  hour  will  come  to  you  with 
the  easy  question,  "  Why  lavish  all  this  time  and 
trouble  in  gathering  up  some  very  trifling  grain 
of  extra  knowledge — knowledge  that,  in  all 
probability,  will  never  become  of  the  least  im- 
portance in  your  hands  ?  " 

And  then,  perhaps,  a  moment  will  flash  into 
your  life  when  this  very  grain  shall  shape  a  million 
destinies.  Are  you  prepared  to  live  for  that 
moment  ? 

I  am  almost  tempted  to  finish  my  letter  at  this 
question  mark ;  and  the  more  so  because  the 
great  public,  or  such  of  it  as  has  been  led  away 
by  a  certain  school  of  literary  sentimentalists,  has 
plastered  my  final  mound  of  observation — shall 
we  call  it  the  human  one  ? — with  such  a  viscid 
layer  of  adulation  that  it  has  become  a  little  hard 
for  a  self-respecting  physician  to  take  his  stand 


28  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

there  even  for  two  and  a  half  moments.  Has 
ever,  I  wonder,  a  doctor  figured  in  fiction  or 
drama  who,  being  neither  a  clown  nor  a  fool, 
was  not  described  as  noble  ?  Have  we  not  tracked 
him  on  his  rounds  through  unconscionable 
horrors,  and  wept  big  tears  at  his  preposterous 
death-bed  ?  No  wonder  such  a  fellow  finds  it 
hard  to  get  his  bills  paid.  To  offer  him  mere 
money  would  seem  little  less  than  sacrilege. 

And  yet,  I  think,  you  will  agree  with  me  that 
here  is  an  aspect  of  medicine  worth  considera- 
tion. To  the  seeing  eye  and  the  tender  hand 
there  is  no  easier  door  into  the  warm  heart  of 
humanity.  There  is  no  other  profession  that  will 
lead  you  quite  so  close  to  reality.  And  by  this  I 
don't  mean  realism  in  the  modern  sense,  wherein, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  the  altogether  ugly  looms  so 
disproportionately  large.  For  after  thirty  years 
of  tolerably  wide  opportunity  I  have  still  failed 
to  find  the  altogether  ugly.  And  though  of 
course  you  will  meet  ugliness  in  plenty — a  cancer 
that  will  find  you  shocked  and,  alas,  largely  im- 
potent— yet,  if  you  look  long  enough,  and  care- 
fully enough,  how  often  will  you  discover  it  to 
be  but  the  shadow  of  some  clearly  shining  spiritual 
beauty.  No,  you  need  not  fear,  I  think,  to  tread 
behind  the  veil. 


To  Horace  Harding  29 

And  now  let  me  round  off  my  epistle  with  a 
brief  reminiscence.  In  my  early  twenties,  just 
after  I  had  qualified,  I  travelled  down  to  a  small 
fishing-village  in  Cornwall  to  act  there  as  locum 
tenens  for  a  practitioner  who  had  finally  broken 
down  in  health.  The  practice,  mostly  among  a 
poor  population,  was  a  scattered  one,  and  I  was 
kept  fairly  busy  ;  so  busy,  in  fact,  that  beyond  a 
hazy  impression  of  buffeting  across  estuaries  in 
big-bottomed  ferryboats,  and  driving,  upon  a  wild 
night  or  two,  along  as  rough  a  coast-line  as  one 
could  desire  to  see,  I  remember  very  little  of  that 
month's  experiences. 

One  remains  with  me.  And  you  must  imagine 
a  rather  tumble-down,  twopenny-halfpenny  cot- 
tage, half-way  down  a  cobbled  street,  with  its 
front  door  opening  directly  into  a  tiny  living- 
room.  A  youthful-looking  Hippocrates  is  backing 
out  of  it  rather  more  awkwardly  than  usual.  And 
in  front  of  him,  still  holding  one  of  his  hands,  is 
a  willowy,  comely  Cornish  lass,  mother  of  three, 
with  the  most  disturbingly  moist-looking  eyes. 
In  the  background  there  would  be,  I  think,  a 
very  old  and  rugged  woman,  crooning  over  her 
youngest  grandchild,  just  recovered,  happily,  and 
rather  miraculously,  from  a  very  tough  attack  of 
pneumonia.  The  young  man  had  been  telling 


30  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

them,  this  simple  family,  that  he  was  going 
away  now,  back  to  London  and  the  big 
hospital.  And  hence — dare  I  write  it  ? — hence 
these  tears. 

"  Ah,  doctor,"  says  the  lassie,  "  'tis  wisht 
you've  made  us.  An'  whatever'll  us  do  now  if 
the  little  uns  take  bad  ?  " 

"  Oh,  rot,"  says  the  blushing  physician,  jolted 
for  the  moment  out  of  a  rather  elaborate  bedside 
manner — "  nonsense,  I  mean.  You'll  get  along 
all  right.  There's  another  man  coming.  And  I 
didn't  do  anything,  you  know,  really." 

"  Didn't  do  nothen'  ?  D'you  hear  that, 
mother  ?  "  And  the  old  woman  looks  up,  with 
her  wrinkled  cheeks  and  cavernous,  sea-blue 
eyes.  "  D'you  think  us  don't  know  very  well 
as  you've  saved  the  poor  lamb's  life  ?  " 

And  so,  as  Pepys  would  say,  into  the  wet,  bright 
street,  and  up  the  hill  to  the  surgery.  She  was 
under  a  misapprehension,  of  course.  Presently, 
if  you  take  up  medicine,  you  will  learn  that  a 
doctor's  part  in  the  treatment  of  pneumonia  con- 
sists chiefly  of  a  masterly  inactivity.  But  a  boy 
of  twenty-four  can't  hear  words  like  that  spoken 
to  him,  and  remain  quite  the  same  person ;  even 
if  next  week  he  is  busy  bashing  hats  in  at  a 
Hospital  Cup-tie.  By  the  way,  I  got  mine  rather 


Horace  Harding  31 


badly  damaged  last  Wednesday  when  Guy's 
won  the  cup  again.  And,  I  think,  now  you  have 
read  this  letter,  that  I  can  almost  hear  you  mur- 
muring, "  No  wonder." 

Your  affect,  father, 

P.  H. 


Ill 

To  Miss  Josephine  Summers,  The  Cottage, 
Potham,  Beds. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

March  14,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  AUNT  JOSEPHINE, 

I  am  very  glad  to  learn  that  your  health 
on  the  whole  has  not  been  much  worse  since 
your  visit  to  us  last  month.  And  I  have  no  doubt 
that  this  last  week's  sunshine  will  have  already 
improved  it.  Claire  is  now  quite  fit  again  after 
a  mild  attack  of  mumps,  and  goes  back  to  East- 
bourne in  two  days'  time. 

With  regard  to  your  rheumatism,  there  are,  as 
you  say,  several  kinds  of  this  complaint,  or  at  any 
rate  a  good  many  affections  that  go  popularly 
under  the  same  name.  And  I  think  that  it  is 
quite  likely  that  the  wearing  of  a  ring  upon  your 
third  finger  might  very  probably  benefit  your 
own  particular  variety,  though  I  am  much  more 
doubtful  about  its  efficacy  in  the  case  of  your 
coachman's  wife.  Yes,  there  are  two  1's  in  bacilli, 
as  you  point  out,  but  I'm  afraid  that  the  article 

32 


To  Miss  "Josephine  Summers  33 

you  read  in  the  paper  is  quite  correct  in  stating 
that  our  insides  contain  a  very  large  number  of 
these  active  little  animals.  Nor  is  the  female  sex 
exempt,  I'm  sorry  to  say.  But  it  is  an  idea  that 
one  soon  gets  used  to,  and  I  doubt  if  the  mea- 
sures that  you  suggest  will  make  a  very  great 
difference  either  to  their  health  or  your  own. 
But  there  was  once  a  wise  old  doctor  who  used  to 
say  that  between  milk  and  good  sound  blood 
there  was  no  difference  but  the  colour.  Per- 
sonally I  prefer  it  sweet.  But  the  sour  kind  is 
no  doubt  better  than  none  at  all. 

With  best  love  from  Esther  and  the  girls, 
Your  affect,  nephew, 

PETER  HARDING. 


IV 

To  Colonel  R.  F.  Morris,  C.B.,  jth  Division, 
Meerut,  India. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  VV., 

March  15,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  RUPERT, 

It  gave  me  real  joy  to  see  your  hand- 
writing again  this  morning  on  the  breakfast-table. 
Only  last  week  I  had  been  thinking  that  one  of 
your  rare  letters  was  about  due.  So  you  have 
just  had  the  time  of  your  life,  have  you,  during 
your  last  shoot  in  Kashmir,  and  find  Meerut,  as 
a  result,  pretty  deadly — and  oh  to  be  in  England 
now  that  April's  nearly  there  ?  A  pestilent  thing, 
isn't  it,  this  divine  discontent  ?  Only  last  week 
I  had  a  letter  from  old  Bob  Lynn.  You  remem- 
ber Bob.  You  were  his  fag,  I  think,  for  half  a 
term.  London,  London,  London — that  was  the 
burden  of  his  desire  ;  and  he  with  a  trout  stream, 
by  turns  cavernous  and  romantic  and  sheerly 
lyrical,  splashing  his  very  doorstep  ! 

And  now  here  are  you,  too,  sighing  for  Pall 
Mall  and  the  Park,  whereas  I,  who  have  them 

34 


To  Colonel  R.   F.  Morn's,   C.B.        35 

both,  would  hold  six  months  at  Meerut  as  a 
cheap  price  indeed  for  those  seven  weeks  of 
Kashmir  forests.  Is  it  racial,  or  universal,  or 
merely  temperamental,  I  wonder,  this  passionate 
yearning  to  be  elsewhere — some  uncrushable 
remnant  of  Romance  ?  I  give  it  up.  I  am  sure 
that  it  is  a  nuisance  ;  and  equally  certain  that  it 
is  in  reality  the  very  salt  of  life. 

Coming  home  sometimes  in  a  tube  railway- 
carriage — the  latest  invention  of  the  modern 
impersonal  Devil — I  glance  down  the  long  line 
of  returning  City  faces.  There  they  are,  sleek, 
absorbed,  consciously  prosperous.  And  I  wonder 
if  they  are  to  be  read  as  indications  of  an  absolute 
content ;  or  do  they  conceal,  by  some  stern  effort 
of  will,  a  restless  desire  for  snow  mountains, 
forests,  moors,  streams,  sunshine,  anything  in 
fact  that  is  the  antithesis  of  Oxford  Circus  ?  It 
is  hard  to  believe  it ;  and  yet  I  am  not  so  sure 
that  it  is  even  unlikely.  For  as  Matthews,  the 
alienist,  said  to  me  the  other  day,  the  only  really 
contented  people  are  usually  to  be  found  in 
lunatic  asylums.  So  we  must  give  them  the 
benefit  of  the  doubt.  But  it's  news  that  you 
want  and  not  surmise. 

And  first  of  all  let  me  reassure  you,  and  with 
no  shadow  of  professional  reserve,  about  your 


36  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

aunt — I  was  almost  going  to  write  your  mother — 
Lady  Wroxton.  For  a  month  or  two,  it  is  true, 
I  was  really  in  anxiety  about  her.  Sir  Hugh's  death 
was  a  literal  dividing  in  twain  of  every  interest  of 
her  life,  and  the  very  breadth  and  diversity  of  these 
was  the  consequent  measure  of  her  suffering.  But, 
as  you  know,  that  fine,  deep-founded  will  of 
hers  could  never  really  fail  her.  And  even  in 
the  darkest  days  of  her  first  grief  and  almost  com- 
plete insomnia  it  was  there  for  us  inadequate 
physicians  to  work  upon — our  stay  and  hers. 
Since  then  she  has  been  resting  down  at  Stoke, 
and  has  been  progressing  slowly  but  steadily.  I 
saw  her  last  month  for  half  an  hour,  and  Roches- 
ter, one  of  the  best  of  G.P.'s,  has  written  to  me 
with  increasing  confidence  in  each  letter ;  so 
that  I  hope,  when  you  return  in  the  autumn,  you 
will  find  her  again  the  strong,  serene  woman 
whom  we  both  love  so  well. 

As  regards  ourselves — well,  if  the  ratio  between 
happiness  and  history  that  is  supposed  to  hold 
good  for  nations  is  equally  true  of  families,  ours 
must  be  singularly  blessed.  For,  upon  my  soul, 
I  find  it  very  hard  to  think  of  any  at  all.  We  are 
all  a  little  older,  of  course,  and  both  Esther  and  I 
have  made  modest  additions  to  our  equipment 
of  grey  hairs.  For  me  there  is,  at  any  rate,  in 


To  Colonel  R.  F.  Morris,   C.B.       37 

this  the  compensation  of  that  increasing  maturity 
of  appearance  which  lends  weight  to  my  opinions 
in  the  eyes  of  a  good  many  of  my  patients. 
For  Esther,  I  suppose,  there  is  none.  But 
(I  speak  of  course  as  a  husband.  And  who 
should  know  better  ?)  they  are  not  altogether 
unbecoming. 

And  it  is  chiefly  in  the  children  that  the  march 
of  time  is  being  most  visibly  displayed  for  us. 
Every  month,  or  so  it  seems  to  us,  they  are  alter- 
ing before  our  eyes.  And  the  adventures,  as  a 
consequence,  have  been  chiefly  theirs.  Horace, 
for  example,  has  filled  out  and  solidified  to  an 
alarming  extent  during  the  last  year  or  so,  tips 
the  scale  at  thirteen  stone,  ventures  an  occasional 
opinion  on  wine  and  the  other  members  of  its 
trinity,  and  has  succeeded  in  attaining  his  Rugger 
"  blue."  It  is  his  last  year  at  Cambridge  though 
and  I'm  afraid  that  the  memory  of  his  one  and 
only  Varsity  match  at  Queen's  is  likely  to  be  a 
little  chequered.  For,  as  you  probably  know,  it 
was  a  record  defeat ;  and  though  both  teams  were 
fairly  matched  as  regarded  the  forwards,  Oxford 
was  vastly  superior  in  all  other  departments  of  the 
game,  as  the  sporting  papers  say.  But  it  was  a 
great  spectacle  for  the  onlookers.  The  Oxford 
threes,  magnificently  set  in  motion  by  their  stand- 


38  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

off  half,  were  quite  an  ideal  picture  of  clever  and 
unselfish  attack.  Time  and  again  they  swept  down 
the  field,  alert,  speedy,  and  opportunist,  in  the 
cleanest  sense  of  the  word.  The  weakness  of  the 
opposition  flattered  them,  no  doubt.  But  it  was 
a  splendid  and  invigorating  exhibition  for  all 
that,  and  one  that  must  have  sent  the  blocd 
tingling  enviously  down  a  good  many  middle-aged 
arteries.  For  there's  always  something  superbly 
tonic  about  this  particular  match,  emanating  even 
more  from  the  surrounding  crowd  than  from  the 
actual  struggle  of  healthy  young  athletes  that  it  has 
come  to  witness.  There  is  no  other  large  crowd 
quite  like  it,  so  unanimously  well-coloured,  clean, 
and  cheerful,  so  lusty  of  shoulder  and  clear  of 
eye.  The  winter  air  has  set  a  colour  in  the  girls' 
cheeks,  to  be  heightened  presently  by  the  in- 
structed ardour  with  which  they  follow  the 
doings  of  their  cousins  and  brothers,  or  cousins' 
and  brothers'  friends.  And  even  the  old  duffers 
among  us  seem  to  don  an  infectious  vitality  as 
we  greet  our  grey-haired  friends  by  rope  and 
doorway.  The  strained  eyes  and  late-night 
cheeks  that  are  not  uncommon  at  such  compar- 
able gatherings  as  those  at  Lord's  and  Henley  are 
to  be  sought  in  vain  at  this  mid-winter  festival. 
And  I  can  think  of  no  sounder  answer  to  the 


To  Co/one/  R.  F.  Morns,  C.B.        39 

modern  cries  of  race-degeneracy  than  a  stroll 
round  Queen's  at  half-time.  "  Ah,  but  that 
shows  you  merely  the  cream,"  you  may  tell  me. 
But  then  races,  like  milks,  must  be  judged,  I 
think,  by  the  cream  that  they  produce.  And  this 
particular  spectacle  at  Queen's  is  sufficiently  re- 
assuring both  as  to  quality  and  amount. 

Well,  it  was  a  great  game,  and  I  wish  you  could 
have  been  there  to  see  it.  Molly,  with  the  halo 
of  Newnham  still  upon  her,  was  as  enthusiastic 
as  her  tradition  will  allow,  while  Claire,  on  a 
special  holiday  from  her  school  at  Eastbourne,  was 
quite  openly  broken-hearted  for  poor  Horace's 
sake.  However,  he  got  enough  hero-worshipping 
next  day  to  soothe  the  most  wounded  of  defeated 
warriors.  The  more  prosaic  problem  of  how  to 
tackle  his  future  is  troubling  him  now ;  and 
I  more  than  half  suspect  him  of  designs  on 
Medicine. 

Molly,  on  the  other  hand,  is  disturbed  by  no 
such  uncertainty.  She  is  already  on  the  com- 
mittee of  the  W.S.P.U.,  which  being  interpreted 
means  the  Women's  Social  and  Political  Union ; 
and  concerns  herself  vigorously  with  the  vexed 
questions  of  adult  suffrage  and  the  feminine  vote. 
Besides  this  she  is  assistant  manager  of  a  girls' 
club  in  Hoxton,  and  combines  an  intense  faith  in 


40  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

the  political  future  of  her  sex  with  an  ardent  ad- 
miration for  Mr.  Wells  and  Mr.  Shaw.  Religi- 
ously, she  is,  for  the  moment  (to  the  acute  distress 
of  some  of  our  nearer  relatives),  inclining  to  an 
up-to-date  form  of  polytheism  ;  but  hedges  with 
an  occasional  (rather  unobtrusive)  attendance  at  a 
more  orthodox  early  service.  Fortunately  she  is  in- 
veterately  addicted  to  the  coldest  of  cold  baths, 
the  roughest  of  towels,  and  a  plentiful  breakfast. 
Moreover  another  phase  of  experience  is  present- 
ing itself  modestly,  but  with  a  quite  unmistakable 
sturdiness,  to  her  consideration.  He  is  a  nice, 
open-air  sort  of  boy  (entre  nous,  Bob  Lynn  junior. 
What  fogies  we  are  getting,  to  be  sure),  untroubled 
about  the  constitution  of  his  ego,  and  frankly 
bored  by  politics,  but  with  a  passion  for  his 
microscope  that  must  be  running,  I  think,  a  very 
neck-and-neck  sort  of  race  with  his  admiration 
for  Miss  Molly. 

Tom,  as  you  know,  is  still  at  Rugby  ;  and  about 
him  we  are  all,  that  is  Esther  and  I  and  Jakes,  his 
house-master,  a  little  anxious.  For  it  seems  that 
during  the  latter  part  of  his  Christmas  holidays, 
which  he  spent  with  a  friend  at  Scarborough,  he 
fell  very  deeply  under  the  influence  of  one  of 
those  ardent,  but  dangerous,  people  possessed  of 
what  they  describe  as  a  passion  for  souls.  This 


To  Colonel  R.  F.  Morns,   C.B.       41 

particular  one,  a  sort  of  nondescript  with  private 
means,  was  what  he  called,  and  what  he  has  tried 
to  make  Tom  and  his  friend,  an  "  out  and 
outer." 

Obviously  shyly,  Tom  sent  us  a  programme  of 
this  man's  meetings — he  was  holding  a  mission 
to  schoolboys — from  which  we  gathered  that  his 
particular  spiritual  preserves  are  confined  to  our 
larger  public  schools.  He  was  a  little  careful  to 
emphasise  this.  Boys  from  elsewhere  were  only 
permitted  to  hear  him  by  special  introduction. 
He  has  not  apparently  been  to  a  public  school 
himself ;  but  owns,  or  was  once  owned  by,  one 
of  the  more  recent  colleges  at  Cambridge.  I 
hope  that  I  am  not  writing  this  too  bitterly,  for 
I  am  trying  to  be  kind  to  his  motives.  But  the 
results  of  his  efforts  upon  Tom  have  been,  up  to 
the  present,  rather  devastating.  The  boy  is  quite 
clearly  in  earnest,  has  been  indeed  very  pro- 
foundly stirred.  With  one  or  two  others  he  has 
started  a  meeting  for  prayer  in  his  house,  has 
given  up  singing  his  comic  songs,  and  has  been 
systematically  tackling  his  fellows  about  their 
souls'  health. 

Knowing  a  little  bit  about  the  boy,  I  should 
scarcely  have  been  able  to  believe  all  this,  if 
Jakes  hadn't  written  to  me  so  very  fully  about 


42  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

the  matter.  He  is  acting  quite  wisely,  I  think — 
has  given  full  permission  and  facilities  for  their 
little  meetings,  with  a  gentle  word  or  two  about 
the  inadvisability  of  too  much  publicity.  Never- 
theless a  certain  amount  of  natural,  and,  as  I 
can't  help  feeling,  healthy  hostility  has  sprung 
up  against  the  movement — a  hostility  that  we 
both  fear  is  being  interpreted  by  the  boys,  and 
their  spiritual  adviser,  as  persecution  for  their 
Lord's  sake. 

I  doubt  if  you'll  understand  much  of  this. 
Your  temperament  has  always  been  too  down- 
right, too  untroubled  with  spiritual  questionings, 
too  simply  aware  of  the  "  things  we  don't  talk 
about."  "  Isn't  this  all  rather  like  cant  ?  "  I  can 
imagine  you  wondering.  But  it  isn't  by  any 
means  all  cant.  And  that  is  what  makes  the 
whole  question  so  difficult  to  deal  with.  For 
into  the  warm  nest  of  the  boy's  soul  this  holy 
blunderer  has  thrust  his  easy,  ignorant  fingers, 
pulling  out,  as  it  were,  the  fledgling  spiritual 
secrets.  They  were  not  ready  for  the  air  and 
the  light  and  the  winds.  They  were  tucked  away, 
as  a  wise  Nature  meant  them  to  be,  under  the 
protecting  feathers  of  the  natural  boy's  careless- 
ness. And  now,  since  they  have  been  plucked 
out  into  the  open  for  all  the  world  to  see,  they 


To  Colonel  R.  F.   Morn's,  C.J5,       43 

must  needs  flap  their  premature  wings  in  a  sort 
of  pitiful,  earnest  foolishness.  While  we,  who 
know  so  well  what  has  really  happened,  can  only 
stand  by,  at  whatever  cost,  to  see  that  the  half- 
sprouted  pinions  may  not  beat  themselves  into 
some  permanent  distortion  or  futility — may  be- 
come, after  all,  those  strong,  supporting  struc- 
tures that  they  were  designed  for  at  their  birth. 

And  all  the  while  there  will  be  the  ever-present 
danger  of  the  natural  boy  himself  discovering 
suddenly,  in  a  dumb  sort  of  way,  that  his  fledgling 
has  been  making  (as  he  will  most  certainly  put 
it)  a  little  fool  of  itself.  And  then  how  despe- 
rately likely  will  he  be  to  disown  it  altogether, 
to  his  lifelong  incompleteness.  Self-constituted 
missioners  to  schoolboys  should  be  required  to 
possess  a  licence.  And  it  should  be  pretty  difficult 
to  obtain. 

Claire  you  will  still  find,  I  think,  when  you 
come  home  next  autumn,  very  much  of  the  pure 
child,  for  all  her  fifteen  and  a  half  years.  Hockey 
and  Henty  bound  her  physical  and  mental  hori- 
zons, and  she  writes  periodical  letters  to  Tom 
urging  the  army  as  the  only  possible  profession 
for  him.  And  now  I  must  put  a  stop  to  what 
will  seem  in  your  bachelor  eyes  the  prosy  out- 
pourings of  the  typical  family  man.  But  then 


44          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

your  Kashmir  precipices  are  not  for  all  of  us, 
you  know  ;  and  I  have  only  just  been  giving 
you  what  you  asked  for. 

Yours  as  ever, 

PETER  HARDING. 

P.S. — There  will  of  course  be  a  spare  bed- 
room and  a  well-stoked  fire  here  against  your 
return  next  October. 


To  Hugh  Pontrex,  Villa  Rosa,  Mentone. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

March  23,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  HUGH, 

Our  exchange  of  letters,  since  you  finally 
left  our  fickle  climate,  has  become  so  regular  that 
I  would  apologise  for  not  having  written  to  you 
since  the  New  Year,  were  it  not  that  by  so  doing 
I  should  be  distilling  the  poison  of  formality  into 
the  pot-luck  of  our  correspondence.  So  I  won't. 

I  am  sorry  to  hear  that  the  bronchitis  has  been 
bothering  you  again,  joining  hands  with  anno 
Domini  to  remind  you  of  our  human  frailty. 
But  your  fingers,  I  see,  have  lost  none  of  their 
cunning,  and  I  immensely  enjoyed  your  little 
exhibition  of  etchings  at  Obach's.  Two  of  them 
I  have  acquired,  I  am  glad  to  say,  and  they  are 
looking  at  me  as  I  write.  And  now  I  almost 
think  that  I  shall  have  to  take  a  third.  It  has 
drifted  into  Obach's  window,  and  for  several 
days  past  its  fascination  has  been  growing  upon 
me.  Three  or  four  times  in  passing  I  have  paused 

45 


46  The   Corner  of  Harley  Street 

to  consider  it ;  and  on  each  occasion  it  has 
brightened  far  more  than  Bond  Street  for  me. 

It  is  the  drawing  of  the  little  flower-girl  who 
has  forgotten  her  wares  to  feast  her  eyes  upon 
the  silk  gown  in  the  shop-window.  And  there 
was  a  time,  I  think,  when  an  older,  or  younger, 
Pontrex  would  rather  have  scorned  to  descend 
upon  so  well-worn  a  theme — it  would  have 
seemed  a  descent  in  those  days.  And  at  first  I 
thought  that  even  now  you  had  thrown  it  in 
among  the  others  as  a  kind  of  sop  to  the 
easy  sentiments  of  the  majority.  But  I  have 
learned  better,  I  think,  and  discovered  that  you 
have  treated  what  is,  after  all,  the  perennially 
beautiful  with  all  your  own  scrupulous  severity. 

I  met  such  a  little  girl  only  to-day  in  Aldgate. 
She  was  not  selling  flowers,  and  was  singularly 
northern  in  type — coming  home,  I  should  guess, 
from  afternoon  school.  Moving  mechanically 
through  the  maze  of  hurrying  passengers,  she 
was  obviously  as  deaf  to  the  street-side  costers 
as  to  the  more  thunderous  traflk  of  the  dock- 
yard waggons.  At  the  corner  of  Houndsditch  we 
almost  collided,  and  she  looked  up  for  a  moment 
from  her  book.  It  was  a  healthy  and  piquant 
little  face,  if  typically  town-bred,  that  she  turned 
towards  mine.  But  the  look,  if  I  could  have  cap- 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  47 

tured  it  on  canvas,  would  have  done  more  than  im- 
mortalise us  both.  For  there  was  reflected  in  it — 
just  for  a  moment — the  very  dazzle  itself  of  that 
authentic  Wonder  which  some  of  us  call  Mys- 
ticism, and  some  Romance ;  but  which  is  only 
half  named  by  them  both.  And  I  should  greatly 
have  liked  to  ask  her  what  book  had  wrought  the 
miracle.  But  the  currents  of  crossing  pedestrians 
separated  us  almost  instantly,  though  not  so  quickly 
as  the  look  itself  had  bolted  back  into  hiding,  leav- 
ing in  its  stead  a  very  ordinary  little  schoolgirl 
extending  the  tip  of  a  small  pink  tongue. 

"  'Ullo,  fice,"  she  said. 

So  I  blessed  her,  and  went  on  my  way  re- 
joicing ;  and  was  quite  ignorant,  for  at  least  a 
quarter  of  an  hour,  of  the  very  gorgeous  pageant 
of  smoke  and  sunset  that  faced  me  towards 
Cheapside.  For,  like  yourself,  it  is  always  the 
humanity  that  these  things  frame  that  captures 
me  first  and  holds  me  longest.  And  I  believe  I 
would  exchange  any  merely  physical  panorama 
in  the  world  for  a  new  vista  of  the  human  soul. 
So  greatly  indeed  is  this  preference  growing  in  me 
that,  keenly  as  I  love  it,  I  find  my  English  land- 
scape already  rearranging  itself  in  my  memory. 
Where  it  was  once  punctuated  by  trees  or  monu- 
ments or  natural  wonders,  it  is  now  becoming 


48  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

mapped  out  for  me  by  such  trivial  affairs  as  some 
passing  word  of  greeting  or  chance  exchange  of 
easy  gossip.  At  this  bend  of  the  road  I  met  the 
decidedly  tipsy  old  rascal  who  assured  me  that 
he  had  made  his  debut  with  Henry  Irving.  By 
that  hedge  two  little  girls  gave  me  a  spontaneous, 
and  consequently  very  sweet,  small  handful  of 
half-ripe  blackberries. 

So  your  little  flower-seller  has  gone  to  my 
heart ;  and  if  Esther  will  let  me — and  I  think 
that  she  will — I  shall  take  her  into  my  house  as 
well.  Can  I  tell  you  more  than  this  ?  My 
opinion  on  your  technique  is  not  worth  having, 
as  you  know  very  well.  I  only  know  that  I  am 
less  conscious  of  it  in  these  latest  etchings  of 
yours  than  in  any  of  the  others ;  and  that  too 
ought  to  count  for  praise,  I  think.  And  in  any 
case  I  mean  it  as  such.  For  indeed  it  is  rather 
refreshing  just  now  to  be  able,  for  once  in  a  way, 
to  ignore  technique,  or  at  any  rate  so  uncon- 
sciously to  take  it  for  granted  that  the  message 
conveyed  by  it  at  once,  and  alone,  fills  the  mind. 
Because,  entre  nous,  I  seem  lately  to  have  diagnosed 
in  most  of  our  galleries  a  small  epidemic  of — 
shall  we  say  ? — hypertechnique.  The  origin  of 
the  malady  cannot,  I  think,  be  very  deep- 
seated.  But  its  outward  and  visible  signs  are 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  49 

rather  striking  eruptions  of  a  polymorphic  type, 
for  the  most  part  somewhat  grotesque,  and  not 
infrequently  even  a  little  nauseous.  And  they  are 
very  modern.  Nothing  quite  like  them  has  ever 
been  seen  before;  unless — can  it  be  possible  ? — 
every  age  has  known  them,  but  time,  in  his 
mercy,  has  hidden  them  in  due  season — a  re- 
flection that  is  not  without  a  certain  comfort, 
since  its  corollary  suggests  the  same  process  as 
being  at  work  to-day — unobtrusively,  no  doubt, 
but  with  equal  certainty.  As  Wensley  said  to 
me  last  week,  if  the  authorities  could  only  be 
induced  to  put  up,  for  example,  Velasquez' 
Philip  IV,  or  The  Laughing  Cavalier  among  the 
annual  exhibits  of  the  New  English  Art  Club, 
even  the  most  completely  self-satisfied  of  Mr. 
John's  young  ladies  would  call  out  for  a  cata- 
logue to  cover  her  nakedness.  But,  alas,  Philip 
IV  remains  where  he  is,  and  the  neo-intellectuals 
of  the  art-world  still  perspire  admiration  round 
their  master's  most  recent  visions,  to  drift  hence, 
in  due  season,  that  they  may  do  homage  to  those 
"  obscenities  in  lavender "  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  Bedlamite  echoes  of  Van  Gogh  on  the 
other,  that  emerge  annually  from  Paris  to  soil 
our  walls  in  the  name  of  progress. 

Poor  Wensley,  he  is  still  chipping  away  at  his 


50  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

unprofitable  marble,  spending  two  years  over  a 
group  that  his  conscience  forbids  him  to  finish 
in  as  many  months.  Every  year  there  are  rumours 
that  the  Chantrey  trustees  are  to  buy  something 
from  his  studio.  And  every  year  they  just  fail  to 
do  so  for  varying  reasons.  Poor  Wensley,  if  ever  a 
genius  cut  life  out  of  marble  (and  will  never,  I'm 
afraid,  cut  marble  out  of  life)  it  is  he,  hammering 
his  years  away  in  the  purlieus  of  Chelsea.  I  have 
seen  a  good  deal  of  him  lately,  and  once  I  am 
fairly  inside  his  studio  find  it  very  hard  to  escape 
those  siren  hands  of  his  white-limbed  men  and 
maidens  under  a  good  two  hours.  His  group  for 
this  year's  Academy,  if  he  has  been  able  to  finish 
it,  will  be  as  good  as,  if  not  better  than,  anything 
that  he  has  yet  done,  I  think.  May  the  gods 
be  kind  to  him,  for  he  needs  their  pity  in  more 
ways  than  one.  He  is  too  good  to  be  allowed  to 
fritter  his  life  away  in  illustrating  nursery  books 
and  repairing  mediocre  saints ;  and  there  are 
times  when  one  cannot  help  feeling  that  his  long 
knocking  at  the  gates  of  official  appreciation  is 
making  him  just  a  little  bitter — brief  times,  for 
the  next  moment  his  eye  will  be  bright  again  and 
his  smile  so  boyish  as  to  make  his  fifty  years  of 
struggle  seem  almost  mythical. 
Leaving  him  there,  with  his  beautiful,  un- 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  51 

wanted  works  about  him,  I  always  encounter  a 
certain  wave  of  spiritual  depression.  For,  look 
where  one  will,  one's  eyes  would  seem  to  be  con- 
fronted only  with  the  grotesque,  the  degenerate, 
the  pernicious ;  so  much  so  that  it  becomes  hard 
to  realise  them  merely  as  the  little  unworthy 
successes  of  a  very  passing  hour.  Our  newest 
music  would  appear  fain  to  wed  itself  to  the 
obscene  imaginings  of  a  decadent  poesy,  to  find 
its  loftiest  inspiration  in  pathological  versions  of 
Elektra  and  Salome.  Our  latest  dances  seek  to 
lift  into  the  very  publicity  that  he  lives  for  the 
erotic  beastliness  of  some  such  vicious  weakling 
as  a  Parisian  apache.  Our  most  up-to-date  novels 
probe  the  labyrinths  of  sexual  perversity  at  a 
shilling  a  time  under  the  banner  of  an  emanci- 
pated virility,  and  our  Sunday  newspapers  reap 
the  dung-hills  for  their  headlines. 

By  this  time,  if  it  is  on  foot,  my  middle- 
Victorianism  will  nearly  have  reached  South 
Kensington  Station,  or,  if  it  has  been  driving, 
Carter's  rosy-gilled  countenance  will  be  at  the 
carriage-door  wondering  why  it  doesn't  get 
out.  And  so  the  wave  will  pass  over  me,  and 
I  shall  be  rocking  once  again  upon  a  more 
equable  ocean.  I  shall  behold  your  little  flower- 
girl  hungering  for  her  beautiful  gown,  and  beside 


52  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

her  nine-tenths  at  least  of  her  brothers  and 
sisters,  hands  out  for  the  real  beauty,  and  entirely 
impervious  to  the  Wildes  and  the  Strausses,  the 
Beardsleys,  Johns,  and  Polaires.  After  all — let 
us  remember  it  humbly  with  thanksgiving — these 
people  do  not  penetrate  our  homes.  They  are 
doled  out  to  us  in  public.  We  scan  them  in 
galleries.  They  are  momentary  sensations  in  the 
circulating  libraries.  But  we  don't  live  with 
them.  At  least  I  don't  think  we  do,  and  in  one 
way  and  another  I  have  seen  the  insides  of  a 
good  many  different  homes.  For  a  man  may 
perhaps  temporarily  subordinate  his  sense  of 
decency  to  a  well-meaning  desire  for  artistic 
fairness.  He  may  accord  a  judicial  word  of  praise 
to  some  particularly  masterly  portrayal  of  a 
libertine's  blotches  or  the  pimples  of  a  fading 
courtesan.  But  he  will  seldom  bear  them  home 
in  his  bosom  to  set  up  among  his  lares  and  -penates. 
And  since  it  is  by  these  that  we  must  judge  (for 
they  are  the  heart-judgment  of  the  race),  my 
billow  of  pessimism  drops  behind  me  and  ex- 
pends itself  in  foam  upon  the  rocks. 

No,  it  is  our  Thackerays  and  Fieldings,  our 
Dickenses  and  Shakespeares,  that  we  still  escort, 
hats  off,  to  the  true  and  formative  intimacy  of 
our  firesides.  Our  Blyths  and  Waleses  and 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  53 

Victoria  Crosses — my  classification  is  mainly 
themic — are  for  furtive  journeys  on  the  under- 
ground, and  a  hasty  burying  in  obscure  corners; 
where  a  sanitary  Providence  no  doubt  arranges 
for  them  some  useful  and  inconspicuous  destiny. 

Well,  the  hour  is  late,  and  I  must  stop.  I  can 
hear  footsteps  in  the  hall,  and  in  comes  Molly, 
looking  very  gay,  if  a  little  sleepy,  in  her  newest 
evening  frock.  She  has  just  been  with  some 
rather  dull  girls  (Ah,  Molly,  Molly,  they  are  non- 
Shavians,  I  admit,  but  just  talk  to  them  about 
horses !)  to  see  a  play.  "  The — what  was  the 
name,  my  dear  ?  " 

"  '  The  Scarlet  Pimpernel,'  "  confesses  Molly. 

I  look  surprised — even  incredulous — remember- 
ing certain  sweeping  damnations  of  a  month  or 
two  ago.  "  But  surely,"  I  venture  timidly, 
"  isn't  that  the  very — er — acme  of  provincial 
melodrama  ?  " 

The  words  have  a  strangely  familiar  sound,  and 
Molly  appears  to  recognise  them. 

"  Of  course  it  is,"  she  says.  "  I  was  taken 
there." 

The  expression  suggests  ropes  and  cart-tails, 
and  I  commiserate  with  her  appropriately. 

"  Poor  Molly,  and  of  course  you — you " 

But   my  courage   fails   me,   and   I   dare   not 


54  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

finish  the  question.    She  tosses  her  dark  head  a 
little. 

"  W-well,"  she  stammers,  and  then,  being  very 
honest  with  herself,  stops  short,  and  begins  to 
grow  a  little  pink.  I  gasp,  half  rising  from  my 
chair. 

"  Surely,"  I  exclaim,  "  you — you  don't  mean 
to  say  you  actually  enjoyed  it  ?  " 

There  is  a  moment's  appalled  stillness ;  and 
then,  very  rosy,  she  stoops  suddenly  to  kiss  my 
forehead. 

"  Daddy,"  she  says,  "  you're  an  old  beast." 
Ever  yrs., 

PETER  HARDING. 


VI 

To  Miss  Sarah  Harding,  The  Orphanage,  Little 
Blessington,  Dorset. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

March  31,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  SALLY, 

If  the  proprietors  of  a  very  excellent  emul- 
sion of  cod  liver  oil  did  not  send  me  (as  they 
do)  a  little  memorandum  book  at  the  beginning 
of  each  year,  I  should  find  letter-writing  to  my 
sister  considerably  more  difficult.  The  book  is 
not  spacious  enough  to  be  called  a  diary,  and  the 
lines  allotted  to  each  day  are  merely  sufficient  to 
contain  the  baldest  records  of  two  or  three  dry 
facts.  But  while  it  is  less  than  a  diary,  for  the 
keeping  of  which,  if  it  weren't  for  you,  I'm  afraid 
that  I  should  never  have  had  even  the  desire,  it  is 
entirely  valuable  as  a  means  to  an  end.  And  may 
the  aforesaid  proprietors  wax  therefore  as  fat  and 
well-liking  as  their  advertised  babies.  For  al- 
though you  may  never  have  thought  of  it,  oh 
sister  mine,  it  was  by  no  means  an  easy  condition 
that  you  imposed  upon  me  in  exchange  for  your 
consent  to  my  wedding. 

55 


56  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

"  One  letter  a  month,  Peter,"  I  can  see  your 
stern  uplifted  finger  even  now,  "  one  letter  a 
month,  you  must  faithfully  promise  me,  or  Esther 
shall  only  capture  you  over  my  dead  body." 

And  although  in  those  glorious  days  it  seemed 
but  a  little  bargain  to  set  one's  hand  to,  yet  I 
may  now  reveal  to  your  horrified  gaze — as  re- 
gards the  pre-emulsion  period  at  any  rate — 
visions  of  a  haggard  physician  battering  his 
cranium  in  a  desperate  effort  to  jog  his  memory 
for  news.  A  little  reflection  will  secure  you  from 
considering  this  to  be  an  affront.  For  the  very 
existence  of  such  visions  is  the  most  eloquent 
testimony  to  the  state  of  his  brotherly  affections ; 
and  to  prevent  your  instantly  taking  the  next 
train  to  town,  I  can  assure  you  positively  that 
the  wing  of  a  merciful  providence  (the  liver 
wing)  took  him  under  its  protection  at  the 
psychological  moment.  Thanks  to  the  cod,  its 
oil,  and  the  emulsion  thereof,  his  memory  has 
been  propped  up  just  when  he  began  to  need  it 
most.  And  this  is  why  I  can  assure  you  most 
positively  that,  although  ourselves  and  our 
daffodils  are  shrivelling  to-day  in  the  bitterest 
of  easterly  winds,  but  three  short  weeks  ago  we 
were  picking  primroses  in  the  woods  of  Upper 
Basildon. 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  57 

We  were  staying  of  course  with  Uncle  Jacob, 
who  was  celebrating  his  seventy-sixth  birthday 
and  the  fourth  anniversary  of  his  retirement  from 
the  judicial  bench  in  contravening  all  the  known 
rules  of  health — or,  at  any  rate,  the  modern  con- 
ception of  them.  Esther  and  Molly  went  down 
on  the  Friday  night,  and  I  joined  them  on  Satur- 
day, his  birthday. 

It  was  a  lovely  warm  morning,  with  just  enough 
briskness  in  the  air  to  remind  one  that  winter 
was  still  fighting  a  rearguard  action,  and  just 
enough  warmth  in  the  sun  to  make  one  quite 
certain  that  it  would  end  in  a  general  defeat. 
Slipping  into  Portland  Road  Station  in  golfing 
kit,  I  caught  an  early  train  at  Paddington,  and 
was  down  at  Goring  soon  after  ten,  where  Esther 
and  Molly  met  me  in  the  pony-trap.  We  were  to 
spend  the  day  upon  some  private  links  upon  the 
downs  above  Streatley,  a  beautiful,  invigorating 
piece  of  country,  and  an  offshoot,  I  think,  of  the 
Berkshire  Ridgeway.  From  a  strictly  golfing 
point  of  view  the  course  is,  I  suppose,  an  easy 
one.  To  players  like  myself,  of  the  occasional 
order,  too  delighted  at  achieving  anything  that 
may  decently  be  called  a  stroke  to  mind  very  much 
about  a  little  pulling  or  slicing,  the  penalties,  no 
doubt,  are  scarcely  severe  enough.  But  there  are 


58  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

possibilities,  at  any  rate,  of  some  grand,  exhilar- 
ating drives ;  the  greens  are  capital ;  and  there 
is  seldom  the  nerve-racking  ordeal  of  playing  off 
before  a  multitude  of  cynical  observers. 

Instead,  this  particular  course  is  filled  for  me 
with  memories  of  elemental  foursomes,  innocent 
of  caddies,  unwitnessed  by  any  living  creature 
other  than  some  simple  sheep  or  an  occasional 
pony,  but  filled  to  the  brim  with  such  dramatic 
fluctuations  of  chance  and  skill  as  are  unknown 
to  (or  at  any  rate  unremembered  by)  your  poor 
plus  I  players  at  Richmond  or  St.  Andrews.  For 
golf,  like  her  fairer  sister  cricket,  reveals  her  wild 
and  fickle  heart  in  a  truer  lovableness  at  such 
places  as  this.  Kneeling  on  immaculate  turf, 
you  may  salute  her  queenly  finger-tips  at  Hoylake 
or  Sandwich  or  Rye — as  her  sister's  at  Lord's. 
But  to  know  her  as  she  is — to  know  them  both 
as  they  really  are — to  snatch  kisses  from  their 
sweet  and  rosy  lips,  to  look  deep  into  their 
honest,  if  baffling  eyes,  you  must  woo  them,  afar 
from  fashion,  by  brae-side  and  village  green. 

And  yet — and  yet — well,  perhaps  that's  just 
how  we  duffers  always  did  talk.  Like  amateur 
mountaineers,  we  are  fain  to  conceal  our  lack  of 
craft  in  an  admiration  of  extraneous  circum- 
stances— such  as  the  view,  for  instance.  And 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  59 

indeed  the  view  from  almost  any  of  these  par- 
ticular eighteen  holes  is  of  the  most  comforting 
type  that  I  know — a  wide,  pastoral  expanse, 
silvered  here  and  there  with  water,  and  apparently 
melting  upon  its  horizons  into  a  veiled  and  delicate 
endlessness.  Upon  such  a  view  I  would  quite 
willingly  close  my  eyes  for  the  last  time.  And 
when  the  day  comes  for  me  to  retire  it  will  be 
to  the  arm  of  some  such  westward  hill  as  this 
that  I  shall  trust  my  aged  pilgrimage. 

Grindelwald,  Como,  Cap  Martin — they  are 
good  enough  company  for  a  mile  or  two  of  the 
road.  To  have  known  them  has  been  a  real 
privilege,  and  to  meet  them  again  would  be  an 
equal  joy.  But  for  the  long,  all- weathers'  tramp, 
for  the  comfortable  silences  of  true  comradeship, 
and  above  all  for  those  last  hobbling  footsteps  of 
the  journey,  give  me  some  little  hill  like  this 
above  English  cornlands. 

And,  taking  everything  into  consideration,  I 
can  really  find  very  little  in  the  way  of  an  emo- 
tional demand  that  the  view,  for  example,  from 
the  fourth  hole  of  this  particular  course  doesn't 
amply  satisfy.  For  eyes  necessarily  accustomed 
to  close  studies  and  narrower  outlooks  there  is 
space  enough  and  to  spare,  and  grandeur  too,  if 
they  are  content  to  accept  it  from  above  rather 


60          T^he  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

than  below,  and  to  feast  upon  those  heavenly 
Himalayas  and  ethereal  Pacifies  that  Nature  and  a 
south-west  wind  will  always  provide  for  the 
untravelled.  As  an  echo,  or  perhaps  fountain,  of 
which  sentiments  let  me  extract  for  you  three 
verses  from  a  weekly  paper  upon  my  table.  They 
are  entitled — it  is  the  Prayer  Book  heading  of  the 
traveller's  psalm — "  Levavi  oculos." 

Mahomed,  when  the  mountains  stood 

Aloof  from  his  so  strong  desire, 
Mahomed,  being  great  and  good — 

And  likewise  free — concealed  his  ire. 
And  since  their  will  might  not  be  bent, 
Mahomed  to  the  mountains  went. 

I  too,  a  clerk  in  Bedford  Row, 

Long  years  the  mountains  yearned  to  see, 

And  since  to  them  I  could  not  go, 
Besought  that  they  might  come  to  me. 

"If  Faith,"  I  said,  "can  mountains  move, 

How  surely  should  they  come  for  Love." 

And  lo,  to-day  I  watch  them  crowd, 
Range  upon  range,  above  my  head, 

Cordilleras  of  golden  cloud, 

And  snow-white  Andes,  captive-led, 

Yea,  Himalayas,  crowned  with  snow, 

Above  my  head  in  Bedford  Row. 

Wiser  than  Mahomed,  like  this  little  clerK,  I 
begin  to  think  that  I  can  see  myself  enthroned, 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  61 

in  my  retirement,  and  letting  my  mountains  be 
brought  to  my  door.  Moreover  to  old  age,  a  little 
timid  of  loneliness,  such  a  view  as  this  would  be 
completely  reassuring.  Cottages,  manor-houses, 
Oxford  with  her  dreaming  spires,  they  are  all  con- 
tained within  its  broad  and  kindly  grasp.  Life, 
human  life,  trivial,  cheery,  part  and  parcel  of 
the  ages,  has  not  here  been  sacrificed  to  any 
merely  scenic  splendour ;  while  beneath  it,  if 
still  flowing  through  it,  lies  the  fierce  and  jovial 
memory  of  Briton  and  Saxon  and  Dane,  their 
frames  long  since  a  part  of  this  quiet  crucible, 
and  all  but  the  heroic  of  their  memories — a  peace- 
able reflection — distilled  into  oblivion. 

Yes,  one  might  do  a  great  deal  worse,  I  think, 
than  retire  to  Streatley.  At  any  rate  that  is 
Uncle  Jacob's  opinion,  and  he  has  been  there  a 
year. 

"  View  ?  "  he  remarked,  when  I  pointed  it  out 
to  him,  "  God  bless  my  soul,  it's  the  finest  view 
in  England.  Let  me  see,  where  are  they  ?  Aha, 
just  there.  No,  that's  not  them.  There  they  are 
• — the  Wittenham  Clumps.  My  honour,  I  think. 
Fore !  " 

When  you  have  stayed  here  so  long  as  an  after- 
noon and  evening,  you  will  perceive  that  as  St. 
Paul's  to  Ludgate  Hill  or  the  cross  to  Banbury, 


62  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

so  are  the  Wittenham  Clumps  to  Streatley.  They 
are,  at  any  rate,  its  soundest  conversational  in- 
vestment. 

We  celebrated  the  evening  with  a  feast  to 
which  Uncle  Jacob  had  bidden  several  of  his 
fellow-bachelors — Esther  and  Molly  being  the 
only  ladies  honoured  with  an  invitation.  Uncle 
Jacob,  who  has  never,  I  should  think,  for  the  last 
thirty  years  consumed  less  than  five  glasses  of 
port  a  night,  accompanied,  upon  normal  occa- 
sions, by  two  cigars,  and  followed,  a  little  later, 
by  a  couple  of  large  whiskies-and-sodas,  was  in 
great  form,  and  very  anecdotal.  He  did  full 
justice  to  an  excellent  repast,  and  was  knocking 
at  our  bedroom  door  at  seven  the  next  morning 
to  summon  us  for  early  service. 

"  After  that,  sir,  you  may  loaf,  lounge,  practise 
approach  shots  in  the  garden,  play  billiards,  or 
pick  primroses.  But  every  able-bodied  person 
must  attend  divine  service  at  least  once  on  Sun- 
days while  he  is  a  guest  under  my  roof."  And  so 
there  he  was,  pink  from  his  morning  tub,  and 
with  an  autocratic  twinkle  in  an  eye  as  clear  as 
yours.  I  have  often,  I'm  afraid,  in  a  horrid, 
professional  sort  of  way,  contemplated  Uncle 
Jacob,  who  is  typical  of  a  distinct  class  of  pros- 
perous old  gentlemen,  albeit  not  a  large  one. 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  63 

All  my  training  and  instincts  tell  me  that  he 
eats  too  much,  and  drinks  too  much.  And  I 
know  that,  until  his  retirement,  his  life,  as  a 
county-court  judge,  was  almost  wholly  sedentary. 
And  yet  here  he  is  at  seventy-six,  cheerful,  vigor- 
ous, and  very  pleasantly  self-satisfied — so  ap- 
parently sound  himself,  in  fact,  as  to  be  perhaps 
just  a  little  bit  intolerant  of  the  frailties  of 
others.  Personally  I  am  always  tempted — a  little 
unfairly,  since  he  is  really  a  trifle  exceptional — to 
wield  him  as  a  bludgeon  over  the  misguided  pates 
of  fanatical  vegetarians.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
how  just  as  reasonably  might  not  some  head- 
strong bon  viveur  wield  him  over  mine,  who  am 
of  course  a  preacher  of  the  simple  life.  No,  I 
think  that  Uncle  Jacob  has  three  things  to  thank 
for  the  blithe  appearance  that  he  cuts  before  the 
world :  his  forefathers'  healthy  and  athletic 
simplicity ;  the  fact  that  both  by  temperament 
and  profession  he  has  lived  an  objective,  rather 
than  a  subjective,  life ;  and  finally  the  truth — 
Medicine's  most  comfortable  axiom — that  Nature, 
given  half  a  chance,  will  always  come  up  smiling. 
He  is  lusty  malgre  lui. 

Apart  from  this  little  visit  in  the  country  I 
have  been  very  busy ;  and  some  difficult  and 
rather  critical  cases  have  tied  me  to  town  ever 


64  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

since.  Horace,  after  some  hesitation,  has  decided 
to  take  up  medicine,  and  is  working  already  for 
his  first  and  second  examinations  at  Cambridge, 
where  he  will  now,  I  think,  stay  an  extra  year. 
Next  month  Esther  and  I  are  snatching  a  week 
with  old  Bob  Lynn  at  Applebrook,  when  young 
Calverley  will  look  after  my  patients,  and  I 
shall,  I  hope,  land  trout  for  a  little  while  instead 
of  fees.  Molly  is  well  and  very  stately,  biding 
her  time,  politically  speaking,  with  a  stern  eye 
on  Mr.  Asquith  and  a  doubtful  one  on  Mr. 
Balfour.  Claire  decided  after  all  that  she  would 
like  to  postpone  her  confirmation  until  next 
year.  She  came  up  for  a  week-end,  at  her  mis- 
tress's wish,  to  consult  about  it. 

"  You  see,  Daddy,"  she  told  me  thoughtfully, 
"  I'm  not  frightfully  keen  on  it " ;  and  then  after 
contemplating  her  toes  for  a  moment,  "  It's  not 
that  I  want  to  be  wicked  exactly,  only  I  like 
feeling  sort  of  comfy." 

When  Mummy  came  in  we  had  a  little  talk 
about  it,  and  it  emerged,  I  think,  that  being 
"  comfy  "  meant  retaining  certain  rights  as  to 
dormitory  feasts  and  midnight  expeditions  that 
were  believed  to  be  incompatible  with  the  con- 
firmed conscience.  Next  year  it  would  be 
different.  Well,  I  suppose  next  year  it  will ;  and 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  65 

having  preached  her  a  little  sermon,  which  she 
accepted  very  gracefully,  we  ended  in  a  com- 
promise. She  was  to  be  as  good  as  she  could,  but 
need  not  take  the  irrevocable  step  till  she  felt 
quite  ready  for  it — somewhere  about  next  Easter. 

Meanwhile  she  has  discovered  Mr.  Stanley 
Weyman,  and  is  doubtful  if  there  is  anything  in 
all  literature  to  compare  with  "  Under  the  Red 
Robe,"  though  one  of  the  girls  thinks  "  Count 
Hannibal  "  almost  as  good. 

Tom's  letters  are  terse,  and,  as  I  told  you  last 
month,  we  are  still  rather  troubled  about  him. 

My  love  to  the  orphans,  with  their  proper  little 
plaits  and  their  shiny  cheeks.  And  that  they 
may  continue  to  rejoice  their  matron's  heart  is 
the  prayer  of 

Her  affectionate  brother 

PETER. 


VII 

To  Harry  Carthew,  Trenant  Hotel,  Leeds. 
-\ 

91  B,  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

April  8,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  CARTHEW, 

I  believe  every  word  you  tell  me  about 
yourself — that  you  are  feeling,  that  is  to  say, 
pumped-out,  uncertain,  doubtful  each  morning 
if  you  can  get  through  the  day  without  breaking 
down,  and  as  a  result  of  it  all,  very  wretched  and 
depressed.  At  the  same  time  I  can  only  assure 
you,  and  I  think  you  must  accept  my  word  as 
a  trained  man,  that  you  are  physically  sound,  and 
indeed  at  this  very  moment  a  "  first-class  life." 

I  know  how  difficult  it  is  to  believe  all  this 
when  one  is  suffering  as  you  are  now.  But  believe 
me,  it  is  the  gospel  truth,  and  one  that  you  must 
reiterate  daily,  and  if  need  be  hourly,  to  yourself. 
Remember  that  all  this  is  just  a  phase  of  experi- 
ence. Twelve  months  from  now  you  will  be  I 
laughing  at  the  memory  of  it.  Twelve  years 
hence  it  will  have  ceased  even  to  be  a  memory. 
And  if  you  could  only  observe  your  troubles  from 

66 


To  Harry   Carthew  67 

without,  as  I  do,  you  would  see  at  once  how  very 
understandable  they  are. 

For  here  are  you,  a  busy  enough  barrister  at 
all  times,  plunging  headlong  into  the  sea  of 
electioneering,  from  which,  after  a  very  stormy 
month  or  two,  you  emerge  to  find  heavy  arrears 
of  work  awaiting  you  at  chambers,  to  say  nothing 
of  two  unexpectedly  prolonged  and  arduous  cases 
in  the  courts.  In  addition  to  these  things  you 
have  been,  as  you  tell  me,  caught  up  a  little  in 
the  present  whirlwind  of  rubber  speculation,  and 
have  had  rather  disquieting  reports  of  Eric's 
health  in  Switzerland. 

Now  I  know  you  to  be  a  healthy  disbeliever  in 
drugs,  the  possessor  of  a  scepticism,  in  this  re- 
spect, that  I  largely  share.  And  I'm  not  going 
to  wind  up  this  letter  with  a  prescription.  But 
you  tell  me  that  your  cases  are  now  well  in  hand, 
and  that  you  have  four  clear  days  before  the 
Leeds  Sessions  begin  ;  and  therefore,  if  you  will 
let  me,  I  am  going  to  assume  the  sceptre  of  the 
autocrat,  and  commandeer  them  for  your  good. 
First,  then,  select  a  bedroom  with  a  south  aspect, 
and  have  your  bed  pulled  up  beneath  the  window 
in  such  a  manner  that,  being  propped  up  with 
pillows,  you  can  survey  some  little  portion  of  the 
outside  world.  Having  done  this,  prepare  to 


68  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

stop  in  it  for  thirty-six  hours.  The  preparation 
will  be  simple.  Procure  a  round  table  and  a 
selection  of  suitable  books.  What  these  should 
be  I  daren't  prescribe.  Let  me  suggest  widely 
that  most  of  them  should  deal  rather  with  ab- 
stracts than  concretes,  that  some  of  them  should 
therefore  be  books  of  poetry,  but  that  a  volume 
of  Jacobs'  stories  should  by  all  means  be  included. 
Select  one  newspaper  only,  and  that  of  an  un- 
sensational  character.  Let  me  recommend,  with- 
out prejudice  to  political  convictions,  the  "  Morn- 
ing Post."  As  regards  Eric,  consign  him  mentally, 
as  you  have  done  actually,  to  the  wisdom  of  his 
headmaster  and  the  school  doctor.  And  for  the 
rest,  commend  your  affairs  to  the  discretion  of 
your  broker.  Now  as  to  diet — for  twenty-four 
hours  you  must  live  on  milk,  and  milk  alone,  no 
matter  how  hungry  you  may  become.  The 
hunger  will  by  no  means  be  hurtful,  and  you  can 
console  yourself  by  remembering  that  your 
bodily  tissue-waste,  while  in  bed,  will  be  com- 
paratively small.  So  much  for  the  first  day. 
For  breakfast,  upon  the  second,  have  a  bowl  of 
bread  and  milk.  Lunch  in  bed  on  some  sole  or 
plaice,  followed  by  a  rice  pudding  and  some 
stewed  fruit.  Rise  at  three,  spend  an  hour  in  the 
garden  if  the  day  is  warm  enough,  and  have  tea 


To  Harry  Cartbew  69 

at  half-past  four.  Being  in  the  provinces,  this 
meal  may  be  accompanied  by  two  boiled  eggs 
without  creating  undue  attention.  Have  a  warm 
bath,  followed  by  a  cold  sponge-down,  at  seven 
o'clock,  when  you  must  retire  to  bed,  supping  on 
bread  and  milk  at  half-past  eight,  and  taking 
thereafter  some  effective,  but  not  too  violent 
aperient,  such  as  five  grains  of  calomel,  let  us  say, 
an  hour  later. 

On  the  third  day,  having  breakfasted  in  bed 
upon  a  cup  of  tea,  two  rounds  of  buttered  toast 
and  a  boiled  egg,  you  may  rise  at  eleven,  and  take 
an  hour's  walk.  For  lunch  you  should  have  some 
boiled  fish,  potatoes,  stewed  fruit  and  custard. 
In  the  afternoon  you  should  take  another  hour's 
walk,  and  have  a  cup  of  tea  and  some  toast  at 
half-past  four.  Dine  in  your  room  at  half-past 
seven  upon  some  clear  soup,  sole,  a  nicely  grilled 
chop  with  some  mashed  potatoes,  and  any  sort 
of  sweet  that  you  may  fancy.  Having  dined, 
drink  a  cup  of  coffee,  and  smoke  your  first  cigar 
among  your  fellow-men  downstairs.  Upon  the 
fourth  day,  arise,  and  have  a  cold  tub.  Don  some 
old  and  comfortable  tweeds,  eat  the  biggest  break- 
fast of  which  you  are  capable,  seize  a  stout  stick, 
take  an  early  train,  and  spend  the  day  in  the 
country,  eating  when  and  what  you  like,  and 


jo  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

drinking,  if  you  can  get  it,  some  good  home- 
brewed ale.  Go  to  bed  early,  and  I  will  promise 
you  that,  upon  the  morning  of  the  fifth,  you 
will  arrive  in  court  at  any  rate  relatively  cheerful. 
A  fortnight's  holiday,  when  the  sessions  are  over, 
will  complete  the  good  work. 

Yrs.  very  sincerely, 

PETER  HARDING. 


vm 

To  John  Summers,  M.B.,  at  Actonhurst,  Granville 
Road,  Bristol. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

April  12,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  JACK, 

I  expect  that,  by  this  time,  a  good  long 
night  and  twenty-four  hours'  reflection  will  have 
restored  your  equanimity.  For  I  can't  imagine 
that  much  more  would  be  necessary,  although  I 
can  sympathise,  with  a  very  sincere  fellow- 
feeling.  Bless  you,  my  boy,  it's  happened  to  all 
of  us — and  goes  on  happening  too,  if  that's  any 
comfort  to  you. 

Why  even  young  Calverley,  who  was  in  here 
just  now,  and  who  looks,  as  you  know,  almost 
supernaturally  solemn  for  his  five-and-thirty 
years,  was  the  victim  of  a  similar  experience  only 
tast  week,  under  circumstances  far  less  considerate 
than  yours.  For  the  old  lady — the  scene  was 
somewhere  near  Cadogan  Square,  and  it  was  his 
second  visit — received  him  in  person,  sitting 
very  bolt  upright. 

71 


The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 


"  You're  very  young,"  she  told  him.  "  I  don't 
like  you.  And  you  don't  understand  my  case." 

So  you  see  your  experience  has  not  been  by 
any  means  unique  ;  and  I  really  don't  think  that 
you  have  any  ethical  ground  for  complaint.  The 
lady  considered  you,  quite  erroneously  of  course, 
to  be  too  inexperienced,  and  having  told  you  so 
in  a  letter  that  is  by  no  means  ungraceful,  has 
called  in  another  practitioner.  He  may  be,  as 
you  say,  an  ignorant  old  rotter.  But  that  is 
irrelevant.  And  the  fact  that  you  are  a  locum 
tenens  doesn't,  I  think,  alter  the  situation. 

After  all,  we  are  merely  the  servants  of  the 
public,  in  spite  of  our  M.D.'s  and  our  hospital 
appointments.  And  we  must  face  the  fact  with 
as  much  philosophy  as  we  can  gather  about  us. 
If  they  don't  want  us,  well,  they  won't  have  us, 
and  there's  the  bitter  end  of  it.  Coming  fresh 
from  the  hospital,  where  one  has  been,  perhaps,  a 
house-surgeon  or  house-physician,  into  the  en- 
tirely different  atmosphere  of  private  practice, 
it  is  sometimes  a  bit  hard  to  realise  this,  and  the 
process  is  always  a  painful  one.  For  between  the 
house-surgeon,  clad  in  white,  backed  up  by  the 
accumulated  authority  and  tradition  of  his 
hospital,  surrounded  by  satellite  nurses,  and  per- 
haps (dare  I  breathe  it  ?)  a  wee  bit  lordly,  and 


To  John  Summers,  M.B.  73 

the  very  young  man,  in  a  new  frock-coat,  who 
will  be  ushered  next  week  by  a  curious  parlour- 
maid into  a  private  drawing-room,  there  is  all 
the  difference  in  the  world. 

Moreover  you  seem  to  have  got  yourself  into 
the  sort  of  practice  that  for  a  young  man  is  per- 
haps the  most  difficult  to  manage — a  practice 
consisting  almost  entirely  of  prosperous  and 
middle-class  patients.  I  am  not  using  the  term 
middle-class — it  is  one  that  I  particularly  hate — 
in  any  derogatory  sense,  but  Jaute  de  mieux  as 
describing  the  very  large  stratum  of  society  that 
pivots  upon  the  shop-counter  or  the  offices  be- 
hind it.  It  is  a  stratum,  as  you  will  be  sure  to 
find  out  pretty  soon,  as  kindly,  honest,  and  really 
considerate  as  any  other,  and  no  less  lacking  in 
heroism  and  endurance.  But  it  is  one  that  has 
not  yet  fully  acquired  perhaps  the  habit  of  emo- 
tional suppression — the  latest  to  be  developed 
in  social  evolution — and  is  consequently  a  little 
addicted  to  superlatives,  and  still  somewhat  over- 
respectful,  no  doubt,  to  such  mere  externals  as 
eloquence  and  millinery  in  other  people.  On  the 
other  hand  it  possesses  an  extremely  accurate 
appreciation  of  the  cash  value  of  services  ren- 
dered, and  its  consideration  for  a  gentleman  is 
by  no  means  going  to  interfere  with  this  when  he 


74  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

comes  before  them  as  a  salesman  of  physic  and 
incidentally  of  advice.  Moreover — and  it's  no 
good  being  hypersensitive  about  it — we  mustn't 
forget  that  we  too,  as  a  profession,  have  but  lately 
differentiated  ourselves  from  the  ranks  of  retail 
commerce — so  lately,  in  fact,  that  the  barber 
tradition  is  far  from  being  entirely  defunct. 

I  can  remember  very  well,  for  instance,  in  my 
first  locum,  a  fortnight  after  I  had  qualified, 
standing  behind  the  counter  of  a  little  surgery  in 
Shadwell  in  response  to  a  patient  who  had  tapped 
upon  it  loudly  with  the  edge  of  his  shilling,  and 
summoned  me  with  a  call  of  "  Shop."  Would  I 
take  out  his  tooth  for  sixpence  ?  No,  I  wouldn't. 
A  shilling  was  the  recognised  fee  for  this  opera- 
tion. Well,  what  about  ninepence  ?  No,  not 
even  for  ninepence. 

"  Orl  right,  guv'nor,  'eave  away  then,"  and  the 
shilling  went  into  the  till,  while  the  tooth,  neatly 
wrapped  in  paper,  was  borne  homewards  for 
domestic  inspection.  Nor  are  such  incidents  by 
any  means  uncommon  even  to-day,  and  they 
add  excellent  lessons  to  those  of  Winchester  and 
New. 

Then,  too,  you  mustn't  overlook  the  fact  that 
mere  youth  itself  is  under  a  greater  disadvantage 
in  medicine  than  in  almost  any  other  profession. 


To  John  Summers,  M.B.  75 

The  idea  of  a  young  advocate  may  fire  the  im- 
agination. The  idea  of  a  young  doctor  only 
suggests  distrust.  A  young  lawyer,  having  the 
keener  wit  of  youth,  may  be  a  safe  adviser  in  our 
legal  dilemmas.  The  young  officer  is  the  marrow 
of  our  army  and  navy.  We  may  even  venture  to 
entrust  our  souls  for  spiritual  guidance  to  some 
earnest  young  priest.  But  when  it  comes  to  our 
bodies,  to  the  actual  tenements  that  contain  us, 
to  such  intimate  events  as  percussion,  palpation, 
the  administration  of  tonics,  or  the  insertion  of 
knife  and  forceps — why  then,  you  know,  we 
must  really  insist  upon  maturity. 

Your  mere  boys  may  administer  our  properties, 
or  defend  our  countries,  or  even  dally  gently  with 
our  souls.  But  when  it  comes  to  our  actual 
flesh  and  blood — well,  we  prefer  the  assistant  or 
the  locum  to  confine  his  attentions  to  the  servants, 
the  children,  or  the  very  poor.  There  are  ex- 
ceptions to  the  rule,  no  doubt.  But  I'm  afraid 
that  you  will  find  it  a  very  general  one.  I  know 
that  I  did.  And  about  the  only  comfort  to  be 
extracted  from  it  is  the  fact  that  it  may  be  re- 
garded as  an  excellent  medium  for  the  acquire- 
ment of  humility.  And  that's  why,  if  your 
brothers  in  the  Church  or  the  Army  become 
more  lowly  in  spirit  than  yourself,  it  must  be 


76  T^he  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

taken  to  argue  in  them  a  greater  endowment  of 
natural  grace.  For  their  teaching,  in  this  respect, 
is  not  likely,  I  think,  to  be  more  thorough  than 
yours.  At  the  same  time,  there  are,  as  you  have 
just  been  finding  out,  some  rather  bitter  moments 
for  the  newly  fledged  medico.  I  remember  once, 
when  I  was  about  twenty-four,  I  think,  and 
doing  a  locum  in  Portsmouth,  being  called  up  for 
the  third  night  in  succession  to  attend  a  confine- 
ment. It  was  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and 
the  night-bell  stirred  me  out  of  the  profoundest 
depths  of  slumber.  Very  weary,  and  very  bleary, 
I  remember  cursing  myself  by  all  my  gods  for 
having  set  my  hand  to  so  laborious  a  plough  as  the 
pursuit  of  healing.  But  later,  walking  grimly 
down  the  empty  streets  in  a  pallid  drizzle  of  rain, 
a  certain  sense  of  heroism  came  to  my  rescue. 
After  all,  it  was  rather  a  noble  thing  to  be  doing  ; 
and  no  doubt  my  patient  would  be  proportion- 
ately grateful.  As  a  matter  of  solemn  fact,  on 
setting  eyes  upon  me,  she  lifted  up  her  voice,  and 
wept  incontinently. 

It  was  a  perfectly  natural  thing  to  do,  of 
course,  in  the  light  of  after  reflection.  She  had 
expected  to  see  the  genial,  middle-aged  physician 
who  had  so  often  attended  her ;  and  behold,  in 
his  stead,  a  pale-faced  boy  who  might  very  nearly 


To  yobn  Summers,  M.B.  77 

have  been  her  son  !  It  was  no  wonder  that  she 
burst  into  tears.  But  it  was  rather  a  blow  for 
the  poor  hero.  Afterwards,  I  think,  having  both 
made  the  best  of  a  bad  job,  and  observed  an  all- 
wise  Nature  introduce  to  us  an  entirely  normal 
baby,  we  became  quite  friendly.  And  you  will 
generally  find,  if  you  know  your  work,  and  refrain 
from  dogma,  that  a  little  patience  will  heal  most 
of  these  differences,  while  the  cause  of  them,  alas, 
will  depart  readily  enough.  It  is  good,  no  doubt, 
to  be  considered  a  wise  old  codger.  But  the  pearl 
that  pays  for  it  is  of  great  price.  So  don't  be 
in  too  much  of  a  hurry  to  part  with  it. 
Your  affect,  uncle, 

PETER  HARDING. 


IX 
To  Harry  Carthew,  Trenant  Hotel,  Leeds. 

91  B,  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

April  15,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  CARTHEW, 

I  am  very  glad.  But  let  me  put  it  to  you, 
sir — that  is  the  phrase,  isn't  it  ? — that  you  really 
cured  yourself. 

Yrs.  very  sincerely, 

PETER  HARDING. 


To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding,  S.  Peter's  College, 
Morecambe  Bay. 

913  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

April  20,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  BRUCE, 

The  whole  subject  is  so  difficult,  and  one's 
opinions  upon  it,  in  cold  ink  as  it  were,  are  so 
liable  to  be  misread,  that  I  wish  we  could  have  had 
a  quiet  talk  about  it  instead.  But  of  course,  since 
you  cannot  leave  the  school  until  the  May  holiday 
begins,  and  will  have,  if  you  decide  to  take  so 
radical  a  step,  to  write  to  the  boys'  parents  in 
India  and  Egypt,  this  is  quite  impossible.  From 
your  letter  I  seem  to  gather  that  this  was  your 
intention  at  the  time  of  writing,  and  it  is  a 
decision  in  which  I  can  sympathise  with  you  very 
deeply. 

For  the  whole  ten  years  during  which  the 
school  has  been  in  your  charge  it  has,  to  your 
almost  certain  knowledge,  and  according  also  to 
the  testimony  of  many  of  your  old  pupils,  been 
absolutely  free  from  this  "  moral  canker,"  as  you 

79 


80  T'he  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

describe  it,  that  you  have  just  discovered  in  it 
now.  And  even  for  a  preparatory  school,  like 
yours,  this  is  a  record  for  which  you  are  right  to 
be  profoundly  thankful.  It  is  one  also  that 
naturally  throws  up  into  a  blacker  relief  the 
present  condition  of  affairs.  Moreover,  having 
discovered  its  sphere  to  be  at  present  fairly 
circumscribed — confined  apparently  to  a  single 
coterie  of  some  half  a  dozen  boys — the  obvious 
course,  as  you  say,  would  seem  to  be  a  prompt 
and  thorough  excision,  -pro  bono  -publico. 

And  yet  I  believe  that  there's  a  better  way — 
so  much  better  that  I  am  sure,  before  receiving 
this,  you  will  have  already  found  it,  and  aban- 
doned your  first  decision.  You  won't  expel  the 
youngsters.  You'll  create  instead  a  public  feeling 
that  will  cure  them.  And  you'll  distribute  them 
in  such  a  way  that  each  will  be  surrounded  by 
it  to  his  best  advantage.  I  feel  so  certain  that 
you'll  have  already  made  up  your  mind  to  do 
this  that  I  won't  put  in  any  special  pleading 
on  behalf  of  these  particular  nippers  or  their 
parents  abroad,  although  I  sincerely  believe  that 
in  taking  so  drastic  a  step  as  you  suggest  in  your 
letter  you  would  not  only  be  magnifying  their 
offence  out  of  all  proportion,  but  that  the  result 
all  round  would  be  more  than  harmful. 


To  the  Rev.   Bruce  Harding  81 

Instead,  the  point  that  I  would  most  urgently- 
put  before  you — in  spite  of  many  an  old  drawn 
battle  upon  the  subject — is  that  the  present  little 
crisis  would  be  an  excellent  excuse  for  recon- 
sidering your  position  as  regards  giving  to  your 
scholars  some  definite  physiological  instruction. 
Because  I  am  quite  convinced  that  at  least  three- 
quarters  of  your  moral  canker  would  more 
properly  be  defined  as  physiological  curiosity 
and  that  the  whole  problem  is  only  secondarily 
one  of  actual  perversity.  Now  your  custom  up 
to  the  present  has  had,  I'll  admit,  a  great  deal 
to  recommend  it.  For  your  boys  come  to  you 
very  young,  usually  at  the  age  of  nine  or  ten, 
shy  and  imaginative  enough  perhaps,  but  for  the 
most  part  mentally  sexless,  and  with  an  almost 
entirely  objective  outlook  upon  life.  In  other 
words,  their  inquisitiveness  is  eccentric  rather 
than  concentric.  It's  a  happy  condition,  and 
one,  as  you  say,  that  must  be  dealt  with  exceed- 
ingly carefully.  When  they  leave  you,  somewhere 
about  fourteen  or  fifteen  years  old,  you  usually 
take  the  opportunity  of  the  good-bye  interview 
to  give  them  some  warnings  as  to  confronting 
moral  dangers.  But  purposely,  for  fear  of 
prematurely  dissipating  a  desirable  innocence,  or 
awakening  what  you  call  an  illegitimate  curiosity, 


82  The  Corner  of  Harlcy  Street 

you  keep  your  advice  to  generalities  in  all  but 
the  rarest  instances.  The  possible  stimulus  to 
dangerous  self-exploration  in  some  unsuspecting 
youngster  has  always  outweighed  for  you  the 
advantages  of  a  too  direct  explanation. 

And  this  is  where,  in  spite  of  your  ten  years' 
immunity,  I  feel  sure  that  your  methods  have 
fallen  short  of  the  best.  Self-exploration  is  only 
dangerous  when  it's  blind,  and  if  self-curiosity  is 
ever  illegitimate — and  I  don't  see  why  it  should 
be — we  both  know  that  some  day  or  another  it 
is  going  to  become  inevitable.  We  know  more, 
because  we  are  fully  aware  that  some  day  or 
another  it  is  going  to  be  satisfied.  And  for  the 
life  of  me  I  cannot  see  why  mere  physiological 
ignorance  shouldn't  be  dispelled  in  the  same 
routine  that  is  employed  for  dispelling  any  other 
sort  of  ignorance,  mathematical,  historical,  or 
what  you  will.  It  can  be  done,  I  am  quite  cer- 
tain, without  rubbing  a  particle  off  the  sweet 
bloom  of  childhood,  and  it  will  go  a  very  long 
way  in  preserving  from  a  much  ruder  handling 
that  of  adolescence  and  early  manhood.  For  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  very  fact  of  refraining  from 
any  definite  instruction  upon  what,  after  all, 
from  the  purely  physical  point  of  view,  is  the 
bed-rock  of  our  raison  d'etre,  lends  the  subject 


To  the  Rev.   Bruce  Harding          83 

in  advance  precisely  that  air  of  unnecessary  and 
even  shameful  mystery  which  is  responsible  for 
about  nine-tenths  of  our  prudery  on  the  one 
hand,  and  our  obscenity  on  the  other. 

There's  so  little  original  in  these  reflections, 
they  represent  the  attitude  of  so  large  a  number 
of  ordinarily  thoughtful  persons,  that  they  may 
probably  bore  you.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  al- 
though there's  a  good  deal  of  educational  spade- 
work  still  before  us,  the  day  will  certainly  come, 
I  think,  when  we  shall  treat  and  teach  sexual 
phenomena  in  the  same  sane  and  self-conscious- 
less  way  as  we  treat  and  teach  the  principles  of 
personal  cleanliness  and  physical  hygiene.  It 
will  be  a  great  day — may  it  come  soon — and 
with  its  dawning  will  disappear  not  only  the 
entire  stock-in-trade  of  a  not  uncommon  type 
of  smoking-room  raconteur,  but  a  very  con- 
siderable portion  of  actual  and  imaginative  im- 
morality. For  if  you  cover  up  anything  long 
enough,  and  refer  to  it  slyly  enough,  you  can 
be  certain  in  the  end  of  making  its  exposure  in- 
decent. If  gloves  became  de  rigueur  for  a  couple 
of  centuries  we  should  raise  prurient  titters  at 
the  mention  of  a  knuckle.  No  ;  it's  air  and  sun- 
light and  the  salt  of  a  bracing  sanity  in  these 
matters  that  is  our  crying  need. 


84          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

"  The  sea,"  says  Mr.  Stacpoole  in  his  clever 
romance  "  The  Blue  Lagoon,"  "  is  a  great  puri- 
fier," and  proceeds,  in  a  little  piece  of  delicate 
and  absolutely  true  psychology,  to  describe  how 
Dick,  the  derelict  boy  on  the  coral  island,  in- 
stinctively ran  naked  with  his  sister  in  the  pres- 
ence of  winds  and  waves,  although  some  impulse, 
born  probably  of  memory,  bade  him  cover  him- 
self inland.  But  his  decency  was  the  same  in 
either  place. 

And  it's  the  sea  air  of  a  healthy  knowledge  and 
acceptance  of  these  matters  that  we  ought  to  be 
pumping  through  our  schoolrooms,  our  dormi- 
tories, and  our  heart-to-heart  talks  with  our 
children.  Approach  them  frankly  enough,  and 
with  no  semblance  of  shamefacedness,  and  we 
needn't  be  afraid,  I  think,  of  any  evil  conse- 
quences. The  guilty  smile,  the  illicit  joke,  become 
disarmed  in  advance  when  their  subject  is  treated 
in  the  same  matter-of-fact  and  unmysterious 
fashion  as  those  of  geography  or  astronomy. 
And  that  is  why,  on  the  whole,  I  am  opposed  to 
the  average  "  purity "  volumes  that  are  pub- 
lished for  purposes  of  sexual  instruction.  For 
though  they  acknowledge  this  to  be  the  solution 
of  a  large  portion  of  the  problem,  they  are  so 
written,  circulated,  and  advertised  as  to  suggest 


To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding  85 

rather  an  initiation  into  the  unspeakable  than  a 
straightforward  piece  of  natural  history.  And 
I  suspect,  as  a  consequence,  that  their  sales  are 
considerably  larger  among  the  prurient  than  the 
pious.  An  older  generation  was  brought  up  on 
"  Reading  without  tears."  The  next  should  have 
a  companion  volume  "  Biology  without  shame." 

Forgive  this  sermon,  but  I  have  been  con- 
fronted just  lately  with  such  a  lot  of  human 
mental  wreckage,  the  direct  result,  in  my  opinion, 
of  the  half-religious,  half-fearful  shrouds  with 
which  we  always  swaddle  up  these  questions,  that 
I  rejoice  in  an  opportunity  for  their  wholesale 
condemnation.  It  was  Mrs.  Craigie,  I  think,  who 
said  that  every  girl  of  eighteen  should  read  "  Tom 
Jones."  And  one  can  see  why,  for  it  is  a  clean 
and  wholesome  history,  if  a  little  unspiritual. 
But  her  education,  like  her  brother's,  should  not 
be  left  haphazard  to  the  chance  reading  of  a 
novel,  or  to  the  unnecessary  blushes  with  which 
she  ponders  certain  passages  of  Scripture. 

Well,  good-bye,  old  man,  and  God  bless  you. 
Chat  it  all  over  with  the  young  sinners,  and  then 
work  out  a  little  course  of  lectures  upon  the  re- 
production of  species.  If  you  have  never  talked 
collectively  to  a  roomful  of  boys  upon  the  sub- 
ject before,  you  will  be  surprised  at  the  rapt 


86  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

interest  and  genuine  solemnity  with  which  they 
will  attend  to  what  you  have  to  tell  them.  And 
the  purity  of  your  school  won't  suffer,  I  think, 
by  its  change  of  foundations. 

Your  affect,  cousin, 

PETER  HARDING. 


XI 

To  Miss  Josephine  Summers,  The  Cottage, 
Potham,  Beds. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

April  22,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  AUNT  JOSEPHINE, 

I  am  glad  to  hear  that  the  ring  has  been 
so  completely  successful  in  driving  away  the 
pains  from  your  joints.  I  haven't  actually  heard 
of  the  wearing  of  a  ring  round  the  waist  for  pains 
elsewhere.  But,  as  you  say,  it  sounds  a  distinctly 
hopeful  idea.  With  regard  to  the  pills,  so  much 
depends,  of  course,  on  what  you  mean  by  being 
worth  a  guinea.  If  you  are  to  measure  these 
benefits  in  actual  cash,  I  believe  this  amounts  to 
about  three  farthings.  But  perhaps  that  is  an 
unfair  standard.  No,  I  don't  think  that  there  is 
the  least  risk  in  taking  four.  I  am  sorry  to  hear 
of  your  gardener's  troubles.  But  I  should  hardly 
have  thought  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  send 
him  to  Torquay.  Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you 
to  suggest  that  he  should  sign  the  pledge  ? 
Your  affect,  nephew, 

PETER  HARDING. 
87 


XII 

To  Tom  Harding,  c/o  the  Rev.  Arthur  Jake 
Rugby. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

April  24,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  TOM, 

I  have  been  expecting  this  letter  of  yours 
for  a  good  many  weeks.  It  would  be  almost  true, 
I  think,  to  say  that  I  have  been  hoping  for  it. 
And  yet  each  week  of  delay  has  been  making,  I 
believe,  for  safety.  So  strongly  have  I  been 
feeling  this  last,  indeed,  that  now  your  letter  has 
actually  come,  and  actually  contains  to  so  large 
an  extent  the  sort  of  material  that  I  expected  to 
find  in  it,  I  am  more  than  glad  that  you  have  hesi- 
tated so  long  before  writing  it.  One  must  always 
stand  away  a  little  from  the  burning  bush  to 
discuss  its  relations  with  an  everyday  world.  Close 
beneath  it,  in  the  first  apprehension  of  its  signifi- 
cance, there  is  no  room  for  anything  but  adora- 
tion. And  I  am  afraid  this  letter  of  mine,  had 
you  received  it  then,  would  have  seemed  to  you, 
if  not  even  a  little  blasphemous,  at  any  rate  lack- 


70  Tom  Harding  89 

ing  in  true  reverence.  For  although  you  haven't 
told  me  so,  I  expect  that  I  shouldn't  be  far  wrong 
in  hazarding  a  guess  that  for  the  first  month  or 
two  after  your  experience  at  Scarborough  you 
told  yourself  that  your  father,  and  perhaps  even 
your  mother,  were  a  little  wanting  in  a  true 
understanding  of  the  miracle  that  had  befallen 
you.  It  was  all  so  new,  so  overwhelming ;  it  threw 
such  a  strange  light  not  only  upon  your  own  in- 
dividual life,  past  and  to  come,  but  upon  the 
sum  total  of  all  other  life  as  well,  that  you  felt 
its  wonder  to  be  almost  incompatible  with  the 
humdrum,  commonplace  existence  that  we  and 
most  of  our  friends  appeared  to  be  leading. 

Had  we  known  it,  as  it  was  then  shining  upon 
you,  surely  we  should  have  been  so  different ! 
You  felt,  I  think,  as  if  you  had  suddenly  found 
us  out.  And  though  you  didn't  love  us  any  the 
less  for  this — perhaps  even  loved  us  more,  in 
another  kind  of  way — you  were  quite  sure  that 
if  you  hadn't  actually  outstripped  us  by  this 
single  leap  into  the  light,  we  had  at  any  rate 
dropped  down  a  little  from  the  high  plane  on 
which,  till  then,  you  had  never  doubted  that  we 
lived. 

How,  for  example,  in  a  world  that  teemed 
with  sin,  could  the  governor  be  so  keen  on  catch- 


90  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

ing  trout  ?  How  was  it,  with  these  dark,  tre- 
mendous millions  hemming  him  in,  that  you  had 
never  seen  him  hand  away  a  tract,  or  preach  the 
Word  in  season  ?  How  came  it,  alas,  that  he 
could  even  sometimes  say  "  damn  "  when  he  broke 
a  bootlace,  or  waste  some  unreturnable  hour  over 
a  rubber  of  bridge  ?  Of  course  with  the  mater 
it  was  different.  Maters  are  different,  and  I'm 
glad  you  thought  of  that,  Tom.  But  come  now, 
didn't  it  run  somehow  in  this  way  ?  Why  natur- 
ally it  did,  and  it  meant  that  your  discovery  had 
already  begotten  another.  It  meant  that  you 
had  suddenly  realised  the  weak  humanity  of  your 
parents.  But  you  must  try  to  be  kind  to  it. 

And  that's  how  it  is  with  all  great  discoveries, 
Tom,  in  every  branch  of  life.  First  one  is  struck 
with  their  extraordinary,  their  dazzling,  sim- 
plicity. Belief — life ;  acceptance — salvation ;  and 
you  had  never  somehow  thought  of  it  before ! 
How  simple,  and  by  its  very  simplicity  how  god- 
like, how  utterly  convincing ! 

And  then,  in  this  new  irrefragable  conception, 
everything  (even  the  governor)  has  to  be  recon- 
sidered, appraised,  condemned,  readjusted,  and 
inspired  afresh.  What  is  this  going  to  mean  to 
me  personally  ?  What  does  it  mean  to  other 
people  ?  And  again,  what  responsibility  towards 


To  T'om  Harding  91 

them  does  its  possession  entail  on  myself  ? 
These  are  the  inevitable  questions  that  follow. 
The  putting  of  them  is  the  second  stage  in  the 
general  process.  The  very  fact  of  their  being 
put  at  all  shows  the  discovery  to  be  already  at 
work.  And  the  answers,  if  the  discovery  is  worth 
anything  at  all,  and  we  have  postulated  it  to  be 
a  great  one,  can  be  of  only  one  kind.  I  must 
pursue  it  to  the  end.  I  must  follow  out  its  lead- 
ing as  far  as  my  humanity  will  let  me.  And  I 
must  communicate  the  results  to  my  fellows 
according  to  the  best  of  my  abilities.  That  is 
the  third  stage,  and  it  is  coterminous  with  life, 
Tom.  Because,  you  see,  all  great  discoveries, 
like  yours,  contain  within  them  the  germ-cells  of 
a  thousand  others.  To  discover  one  or  two  of 
these,  to  nourish  them,  and  perhaps  even,  if  one 
is  very  fortunate,  to  enable  them  in  some  degree 
to  fructify,  is  more  than  a  life-work  for  most 
of  us. 

So  true  is  this,  and  so  endless  and  apparently 
diverse  appear  to  be  their  various  possibilities, 
that  we  are  apt  very  easily  (especially  in  middle 
life)  to  forget  the  splendid,  sweeping  simplicity 
of  the  initial  idea,  just  as  we  are  equally  apt  to 
overrate,  perhaps,  the  importance  of  those  par- 
ticular germs  that  we  have,  by  temperament  and 


92  The  Corner  of  Har/ey  Street 

circumstance,  elected  to  serve,  and  to  underrate 
the  value  of  those  to  which  our  neighbours  have 
been  attracted.  And  it  is  because  of  the  first  of 
these  things  that  I  want  to  thank  you  for  your 
letter,  and  tell  you  how  very  much  I  value  it. 
You  have  reminded  me  again  of  something  that 
I  would  never  like  to  forget.  You  have  re-created 
for  me  the  right  atmosphere.  Belief  is  life, 
Tom,  in  a  great  many  more  senses  than  one. 
Hang  on  to  that  like  a  limpet,  and  the  peace  of 
heart  that  means  strength  of  hand  will  never 
leave  you.  But  it's  because  of  the  second  of 
these  things  that  I  want  you  to  hesitate  just  a 
little  longer  before  you  commit  yourself  to  the 
proposition  in  your  letter. 

To  be  a  lay  evangelist,  something  like  the 
gentleman  whose  services  you  attended,  may  be 
as  high  and  noble  a  life  as  any  that  the  world  has 
to  offer  you.  As  I  conceive  it,  lived  to  its 
greatest  advantage,  it  must  be  an  exceedingly 
difficult  one,  which  should  only  of  course  make 
it  the  more  worth  living.  But  to  say  that  it  is  the 
best  worth  living,  while  it  may  be  true  for  your- 
self, is  certainly  not  true  as  a  general  principle. 
There  is  no  one  sort  of  life  that  is  the  best  worth 
living.  And  in  considering  the  question,  as  you 
certainly  must,  I  think  you  ought  to  be  very 


To  Tom  Harding  93 

careful  to  keep  this  before  your  mind.  Ways  in 
life  are  not  to  be  selected  like  articles  from  a  shop- 
window.  You  cannot  ask  for  the  best,  and  go 
away  with  it  in  your  pocket.  The  best  worth 
living  life  is  already  inside  you.  And  your  new 
discovery  is  not  going  to  determine  its  nature — 
heredity  and  a  thousand  other  things  have  already 
done  that — but  rather  its  quality.  You  may  be 
cut  out  for  a  lay,  or  any  other  kind  of  evangelist. 
I  hadn't  somehow  suspected  it  in  you.  But  I 
may  easily  have  been  wrong.  Yet  I  think  you 
mustn't  take  any  definite  vows  upon  your 
shoulders — at  any  rate,  for  some  time — and 
probably,  I  suspect,  for  several  years. 

Promises  of  this  sort,  you  see,  are  so  very  much 
better  left  unmade.  For  in  the  first  place,  the 
remembrance  of  them  is  more  than  likely  to  blur 
the  gladness,  and  consequent  usefulness,  with 
which  you  will  obey  your  temperament  and 
tendencies  in  later  years,  should  these  determine 
for  you  some  different  course.  And  in  the  second, 
they  may  even,  standing  upon  some  mistaken 
scruple  of  conscience,  succeed  in  forcing  you, 
against  your  real  calling,  into  an  altogether  un- 
suitable career. 

Meanwhile  you  need  have  no  fears,  I  think,  in 
leading  your  normal,  probationary  life.  You 


94          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

have  the  opportunity  of  University  education 
before  you.  And  that,  at  any  rate,  can  do  you 
no  harm,  and  will  probably  be  of  extreme  use 
to  you,  whatever  your  ultimate  decision.  You 
want  to  find  out  the  truth,  to  impart  the  truth, 
and  to  help  your  fellow-men  to  lead  better  lives. 
Very  well  then,  if  there's  a  God,  Tom,  as  you 
and  I  believe,  you  must  be  just  the  material  that 
He  would  most  greatly  care  to  use.  So  why  not 
leave  it  at  that  for  a  little  while  ?  Want  to  do 
the  right  thing,  and  so  do  the  next  one  ;  and 
you'll  find,  I  think,  that  the  precise  nature  of 
your  own  particular  right  thing,  evangelist  or 
engineer,  will  pretty  certainly  settle  itself. 

Your  aft.  father, 

P.  H. 


XIII 

To  Hugh  Pontrex,  Villa  Rosa,  Mentone. 

c/o  DR.  ROBERT  LYNN, 

APPLEBROOK,  DEVON, 

May  3,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  HUGH, 

I  have  just  come  back  to  read  your  letter 
from  one  of  those  super-days  of  which  even 
the  happiest  life  can  contain,  I  imagine,  no  more 
than  a  handful.  Of  merely  good  days  I  can 
remember  many  enough — a  sufficient  number, 
at  any  rate,  to  absorb  very  happily  the  memory 
of  their  less  favoured  brethren.  And  several  of 
them  remain  distinct  by  virtue  of  some  outstand- 
ing incident  or  emotion  that  they  contained  or 
inspired.  But  most,  I  think,  have  become  blended 
into  a  general  peaceable  impression  of  past  con- 
tentment. To  use  a  popular  Americanism,  they 
were  good  times,  and  usually  real  good  times  at 
that. 

But    of    these    super-days,    these    Olympians 
among  mundane  experiences,  no  man  can  expect 

95 


96  The  Corner  of  Harky  Street 

very  many,  and  I  have  been,  I  suspect,  as  for- 
tunate as  most — in  any  case  so  fortunate  as  to 
be  more  than  grateful,  notwithstanding  the  tiny, 
struggling  sense  in  me  (a  legacy  of  superstition, 
I  suppose,  from  some  far-back  ancestors)  that  so 
exquisite  an  enjoyment  must  surely  prelude  some 
equivalent  disaster.  They  are  not,  as  a  rule,  I 
think,  critical  days,  at  any  rate  in  the  ordinarily 
accepted  sense  of  the  term,  though  I  can  remem- 
ber perhaps  a  couple  that  in  a  small  fashion 
might  answer  this  description. 

The  first  of  them  was  in  my  fifteenth  year,  and 
was  the  last  day  (at  the  end  of  six  weeks'  strict 
training)  of  the  House  Races  at  school.  Our 
four  had  started  bottom  of  the  river,  and  day 
by  day  had  crept  up  until,  in  the  evening  of  this 
particular  one,  we  were  to  row  the  favourites, 
School  House,  for  the  cup.  When  I  call  them 
the  favourites,  they  were  this  merely  in  a  sporting 
sense.  Because,  I  think,  the  succession  of  good 
fights  put  up  by  our  own  insignificant  little  house, 
added  to  a  certain  reputation  for  conceit  that 
most  School  Houses  would  seem  to  possess,  had 
won  pretty  nearly  the  whole  of  the  rest  of  the 
school  to  our  support.  As  a  very  junior  and  in- 
ferior oarsman  (and  I  was  more  than  conscious  of 
this  at  the  time,  I  remember)  I  can  claim  no 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  97 

particular  share,  other  than  an  accidental  one,  in 
this  series  of  victories.  I  had  been  one  of  two 
candidates  for  the  post  of  bow,  and  being  a  few 
pounds  heavier  than  my  opponent,  had  managed 
to  secure  the  thwart.  But  my  mere  unde- 
servedness  did  not  lessen — in  fact,  I  think,  it 
enhanced — the  almost  miraculous  sweetness  of 
those  wonderful  twelve  hours.  To  be  gazod  at 
surreptitiously  by  yet  smaller  boys  in  a  patently 
envious  admiration ;  to  be  patted  on  the 
back  by  older  ones  who  had  nevei  hitherto 
noticed  my  existence ;  to  be  let  out  of  school 
half  an  hour  earlier  by  the  form-master,  with  a 
jocose  phrase  about  privileged  heroes — all  these 
things  wove  a  magic  round  my  way  that  no 
anxiety  about  the  coming  race  was  strong  enough 
to  mar,  and  that  has  survived  a  good  many  years. 
Of  the  race  itself  I  can  remember,  curiously, 
nothing  but  the  peculiar  hollow  echo  of  our 
oars  as  we  came  through  the  Town  Bridge,  and 
the  bare  fact  that  we  succeeded  in  winning,  to 
the  supposed  vast  humiliation  of  our  superior 
enemies.  But  what  I  do  remember  most  dis- 
tinctly is  being  invited  to  tea  with  the  captain, 
a  big  man  and  a  monitor.  It  was  a  splendid,  god- 
like meal,  in  which  the  six  weeks'  abstention  (mis- 
taken, no  doubt,  but  none  the  less  heroic)  from 
G 


98  The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

sweets  and  pastries  was  utterly  forgotten.  And 
there  stands  out  to  me  the  doughnut  that  dis- 
missed them  to  oblivion,  a  doughnut  of  so  succu- 
lent a  clamminess  that  it  is  unlikely,  I  think,  ever 
to  have  had  its  peer — a  very  Lycidas  among 
doughnuts. 

The  second  day  that  occurs  to  me  is  that  in 
which,  playing  through,  for  the  first  time  in 
many  years,  to  the  Finals,  the  Hospital  XV  was 
defeated  after  a  gruelling  ninety  minutes  by  the 
team  that  represented  Guy's.  This  must  have 
been  some  eight  or  nine  years  later,  and  its 
essence  is  contained  in  my  memory  by  five  per- 
fect minutes,  gloriously  relaxed,  tired  but  hard, 
in  a  hot  bath  at  Richmond. 

Now  looking  back,  I  know  these  to  have  been 
super-days,  and  they  were,  as  I  have  explained, 
in  a  very  minor  sense  critical  perhaps.  But  they 
were  exceptions,  I  think,  to  the  general  rule.  For 
though  the  critical  day,  the  long-looked-forward- 
to,  the  apparently,  and  indeed,  chronologically 
speaking,  the  really  important  day  may  be  a  good 
one,  and  contain  great  things,  yet  in  later  life,  at 
any  rate,  there  is  an  inseparable  anxiety  about  it 
of  which  the  super-day  knows  nothing.  The  day 
one  qualified,  for  example,  and  became  by  one 
scratch  of  the  pen  licensed  to  sign  death-certifi- 


To  Hugh  ^ontrex  99 

cates,  exempt  from  serving  on  fire  brigades,  and 
worth  (on  paper)  from  three  to  five  guineas  a 
week  as  a  locum  tenens,  was,  no  doubt,  a  notable 
one.  The  day  one  proposed  oneself  in  a  kind  of 
stammering  paralysis  as  a  possible  husband  to  the 
only  possible  girl — and  was  unbelievably  accepted; 
the  marriage  day ;  the  day  when  one  was  ap- 
pointed to  the  hospital  staff  ;  the  day  when,  in  a 
cool  and  blinded  room,  one  stooped  to  kiss  the 
tired  but  joyful  eyes  of  the  first  baby's  mother — 
these  are  the  dates  over  which,  most  probably, 
the  outside  historian  would  choose  to  pour  the 
vials  of  his  fancy.  But  I  doubt  if  in  any  life 
these  are  ever  the  super-days.  They  are  days  to 
remember ;  but  at  the  same  time  they  are  days 
that  one  is  glad  to  have  seen  closed.  They  have 
beheld  Destiny  too  visibly  hanging  on  so  des- 
perately fine  a  balance. 

No,  they  come,  these  gift-days  from  the  gods, 
even  as  they  list ;  and  they  refuse  to  be  classi- 
fied. The  most  constant  feature  about  them,  I 
think,  is  that  they  rather  generally  appear  during 
a  holiday.  And  this,  I  believe,  is  because  they 
depend  so  much  on  a  certain  purely  bodily  fitness. 
I  hesitate  a  little  to  be  very  dogmatic  about  this, 
because  the  older  one  grows  the  more  spiritual, 
and  consequently  deeper,  becomes  their  joy. 


loo         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

And  yet,  for  the  majority  of  us,  at  any  rate,  I 
am  certain  that  the  temple  must  be  at  least  in 
passable  order  if  the  spirit  within  is  to  look  abroad 
with  an  unworried  heart,  and  thoroughly  spring- 
cleaned  before  its  householder,  free  from  domes- 
tic cares,  can  roam  joyously  at  will  to  find  those 
rarer  flowers  that  he's  so  seldom  free  enough  to 
seek.  And  there  lies  my  stock  argument  for  all 
misguided  religious  workers  who  won't  take 
holidays,  and  incidentally  the  real  damnation  of 
all  systems  of  monastic  self-mortification.  A 
sound  body  not  only  means  a  sound  mind,  but 
an  untrammelled  spirit.  For  a  spirit  that  has 
constantly  to  be  down  on  its  knees  stopping  up 
some  leak  in  the  basement  cannot  possibly  find 
much  time  for  walking  in  the  garden  with  God. 
And  if  it's  a  self-made  or  self -permitted  leak,  it 
hasn't  even  the  excuse  of  being  engaged  in  some 
equally  necessary  occupation. 

Yet  apart  from  this,  there  isn't  a  doubt,  I 
think,  that  these  super-days  stand  out  in  memory, 
and  gain  their  constructive  force  less  by  reason 
of  their  muscular  exaltation  than  by  virtue  of 
their  spiritual  vision.  For  even  in  the  days  of 
the  doughnut  and  the  hot  bath  this  last  wasn't 
altogether  absent.  The  doughnut  marked  the 
closing  of  an  epoch  and  the  dawn  of  its  successor. 


T0  Hugh  Pontrex  101 

It  meant  the  passage — and  to  a  certain  extent  the 
conscious  passage,  too — of  an  irresponsible  child- 
hood into  a  region  of  honourable  reputation.  It 
was  a  doughnut  that  had  been  bestowed  by  the 
hands  of  a  captain.  While  the  hot  bath,  careless 
of  defeat,  merely  whispered  how  great  had  been 
the  game.  And  in  their  successors  of  later  years 
this  spiritual  factor  has  tended  to  emphasise  itself 
in  an  ever-growing  proportion.  Wordsworth 
might  almost  have  selected  the  theme,  I  think, 
for  an  Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Immortality  in 
Middle  Age.  I  can  remember  one  such  day  on 
Butser  Hill,  during  a  snatched  week-end  in  Hamp- 
shire, and  another  that  is  summed  up  for  me  in 
a  bend  of  heather-bordered  road,  turning,  at  a 
hot  day's  end,  towards  Stronachlacher  and  a 
green  lawn  above  Loch  Katrine. 

And  now,  with  an  equal  unexpectedness,  there 
has  come  the  latest  of  them  all. 

You  know  how  it  goes  on  a  holiday — the  holi- 
day, that  is,  of  a  man  to  whom  holidays  are  rare 
and  very  blessed.  For  the  first  day  your  mind 
has  not  yet  freed  itself  from  town  and  toil  and 
the  hundred  other  interests  for  which  they  stand. 
Nor  has  your  body  quite  overcome  the  lassitude 
inspired  by  pavements,  and  encouraged  by  taxi- 
cabs  and  broughams.  Your  host,  too,  wants  to 


102 


learn  the  latest  tidings  from  the  great  metropolis ; 
what  So-and-so  thinks  of  the  political  situation  ; 
the  prevailing  opinion  on  stocks  and  shares ;  the 
last  pronouncements  on  art  and  music ;  the 
newest  good  thing  in  plays.  And  perhaps  even, 
if  you  chance  to  be  of  the  same  profession,  you 
fall  to  talking  shop.  Not  even  the  magic  of 
plunging  streams  and  deep,  rock-shaded  pools  is 
quite  sufficient,  for  the  moment,  to  dispel  the 
urban  atmosphere  that  still  clings  about  you. 
Your  unused  muscles  remind  you  of  the  reason 
for  their  flabbiness.  Your  eye,  too  long  engaged 
upon  other  sights,  is  not  yet  quick  enough  to 
mark  the  swift  rise  among  those  ripples  at  the  tail 
of  the  pool.  And  you  return  from  your  first 
day's  fishing  a  little  annoyed  with  yourself,  aching 
as  regards  the  wrist  and  thigh,  and  more  often 
than  not  with  a  light  or  empty  bag.  Yet  even  so, 
mark  the  change  in  your  after-dinner  talk ! 
Smoking  there  round  the  hall  fire,  surrounded  by 
rods  and  guns  and  cases  of  fish  and  game,  you 
no  longer  deliver  yourself  of  opinions  on  the 
rubber  market  or  the  precise  value  of  the  latest 
vaccine.  You  discuss  instead  the  reason  why  you 
missed  that  pounder  under  Applebrook  Bridge. 
And  you  sit  for  long  minutes  staring  through 
a  blue  tobacco  haze  into  the  wood-fire's  heart, 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  103 

presumably  thinking,  but  in  reality  doing 
nothing  of  the  kind.  For  though  the  gates 
of  your  brain  are  open,  it  is  to  speed  rather 
than  receive  impressions.  And  by  to-morrow 
the  overcrowded  hostel  of  your  mind  will  be 
standing  with  doors  ajar  for  its  lustier  moorland 
visitors. 

So  it  has  been  with  me,  Hugh,  and  to-day,  the 
third  of  my  holiday,  has  been  one  of  those  great 
ones  of  which  I  have  been  writing.  Talking 
sleepily  in  bed  last  night  to  Esther  I  had  an- 
nounced an  intention,  received  by  her  with  a 
discreet  appearance  of  belief,  of  sallying  out 
early  to  try  a  couple  of  those  big  pools  at  the 
junction  of  the  Applebrook  and  Dart.  But  the 
servant  with  the  shaving  water  found  us  both 
comfortably  asleep  at  half-past  eight,  with  two 
silvery  morning  hours  unfished  except  in  dreams. 
Dear  me,  but  what  a  glorious  air,  and  how  divine 
a  whisper,  too  frail  to  be  called  a  scent,  of  deli- 
cately browning  trout ! 

For  old  Bob  had  been  up  betimes,  and,  in  spite 
of  a  powder  of  frost  on  the  riverside  gorse  and 
alders,  had  succeeded  in  beguiling  half  a  dozen 
plump  little  troutlings  into  providing  the  hors- 
d'oeuvre  to  a  substantial  three-decker  breakfast. 
The  family  had  already  made  their  meal,  by  the 


104         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

time  we  got  downstairs,  and  old  Bob,  ruddy  and 
contented,  surveyed  us  approvingly  from  the 
hearthrug. 

"  If  the  sun  didn't  find  you  yesterday,"  he 
chuckled,  "  I  fancy  the  breeze  did,"  and  Mrs. 
Bob  murmured  something  to  Esther  about  hazel- 
ine  ointment.  A  long  round  would  prevent  Bob 
from  doing  any  more  fishing  for  the  rest  of  the 
day,  but  a  touch  of  south  in  the  wind  had  decided 
him  that  Esther  and  I  must  settle  upon  the  East 
Dart  for  our  third  day's  sport. 

"  The  wind  should  help  you,"  he  said  ;  "  and 
you  ought  to  have  a  pretty  good  time,"  and 
became  forthwith  a  prophet,  though  not  concern- 
ing trout.  I'm  not  going  to  bother  you  with 
details  of  our  angling.  It  was  very  arduous,  for 
the  wind  changed  almost  as  soon  as  we  had 
started,  and  blew  down  the  steep  valley  at  a 
good  many  miles  an  hour.  But  it  was  at  least 
exciting,  and  we  lunched  in  a  hail-storm  on  sand- 
wiches and  fruit  pies,  conveyed  to  us  across  the 
moor  by  Nancy  on  her  pony. 

Do  you  remember  Nancy  Lynn,  a  blush-rose 
little  baby-girl  a  dozen  years  ago  ?  But  I'm 
sure  you  do,  and  I  wish  you  could  have  seen  her 
to-day  as  she  rode  down  to  us  along  the  steep 
path  to  the  river,  straddle-legged  on  her  Dart- 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  105 

moor  pony,  bareheaded,  and  the  colour  of  a  ripe 
chestnut — lustiest  of  little  animals,  but  with 
eyes,  as  she  cuddled  her  pony's  nose,  that  have 
already  learned  to  spell  mother,  and  sometimes 
wonder  what  it  means. 

After  lunch,  Esther  went  home  with  her  to 
meet  some  friends  of  Mrs.  Lynn  at  tea,  and  I 
was  to  fish  a  mile  or  two  further  up  stream,  re- 
turning later  in  the  evening.  But  smoking  my 
pipe  under  the  stone  wall  that  had  sheltered  our 
meal,  it  was  a  long  time  before  I  again  took  up 
my  rod.  And  instead  I  sat  there  under  the 
clearing  sky — a  great  gulf  now  of  tear-washed 
blue,  deepening  into  an  immeasurable  calm  be- 
hind these  trivial  clouds — and  watched  the  two 
of  them  making  their  leisurely  way  along  the  hill. 
And  seen  thus,  at  a  little  distance,  they  might 
very  easily  have  been  sisters.  There  was  the 
same  spring  in  their  boyish  tread,  and,  could  I 
have  seen  it,  I  have  no  doubt  that  there  was  the 
same  kind  of  look  in  their  clear,  contented  eyes. 
For  what  Nancy  now  was,  Esther  so  obviousl) 
once  had  been.  And  what  Esther  had  become, 
Nancy  in  her  kind  would  also  grow  to  be — and 
subtly,  to  some  small  extent,  because  of  Esther. 
Indeed  it  might  almost  have  been  Esther  as  she 


106        The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

was,  walking  pleasantly  with  Esther  as  she  is,  the 
child's  instinct  of  living  only  each  moment's  life, 
clinging  happily  to  the  woman's  deeper  phil- 
osophy of  doing  precisely  the  same.  I  wonder 
if  you  see  what  I'm  driving  at.  It  all  looks  so 
commonplace  on  paper.  They  were  really  of 
course  two  ordinary  people,  a  young  girl  and  a 
woman,  disappearing  down  a  path.  But  to  an 
elderly  physician  (a  thousand  feet  up,  and  on  a 
super-day,  mind  you)  they  seemed  suddenly  to 
be  something  rather  more.  For  swinging  hands 
as  they  walked,  half-way  between  the  changing 
water  and  the  changeless  Tor,  it  was  as  though 
now  they  held  visibly  between  them  some  mystical 
arm's-length  of  the  secret  core  of  life — something 
that  was  at  once  common  to  their  age  and  youth, 
and  was  yet  apart  from  both ;  something,  inde- 
pendent of  circumstance,  that  was  swinging  for 
a  benediction  over  the  years  that  lay  between 
them.  And  I'll  tell  you  what  it  was,  Hugh,  or 
at  any  rate  what  I  knew  it  to  be  this  afternoon. 
It  was  just  the  Ultimate  Truth  about  things. 
And  behold  it  was  very  good  ! 

So  that's  why  I've  written  you  this  letter  in 
answer  to  your  sad  one  of  this  evening. 

For  though  there  is  said  to  be  a  kind  of  com- 


T0  Hugh  Pontrex  107 

fort,  I  believe,  in  realising  that  others  are  suffer- 
ing like  ourselves,  I  doubt  if  this  is  ever  a  comfort 
worth  having.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is 
a  certain  amount  of  real  satisfaction  in  knowing, 
at  the  end  of  a  blank  day,  that  your  neighbour,  at 
any  rate,  has  had  a  bit  of  luck.  And  so  because 
you  write  to  me  de  profundis,  your  bronchial 
mucous  membrane  being  more  than  usually  con- 
gested, I'm  deliberately  crowing  to  you  from 
my  little  hill-top.  But  there's  another  reason, 
Hugh.  Do  you  remember,  twelve  years  ago, 
facing  me  on  Believer  Bridge,  and  holding  out  to 
me  a  lean  brown  hand  to  grasp  ?  I  was  there 
this  afternoon,  and  that  nice  sunburnt  girl  has 
now  got  a  family  of  six. 

"  Peter,"  you  said  to  me,  "  this  has  been  a 
great  day.  It  has  been  worth  living  for.  I 
wouldn't  have  missed  it  for  whatever's  got  to 
come.  And  if  you're  a  real  pal  you  won't  let  me 
forget  that." 

And  so  I  have  reminded  you.  That  was  one 
of  your  super-days,  and  you  chose  to  make  it 
your  throne  of  judgment  upon  life.  And  you 
were  right,  Hugh,  because  you  judged  by  the 
best,  and  life,  like  genius,  must  always  be  greater 
than  even  its  highest  gifts  to  us.  Some  day,  when 


io8         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

I  too  am  glowering  upon  it  from  the  windward 
side  of  a  bronchitis-kettle,  I  hope  there'll  be  an 
equally  tactful  fellow  to  remind  me  of  this. 
Perhaps  you'll  be  the  fellow. 

Ever  yours, 

P.  H. 


XIV 

To  Miss  Molly  Harding,  916  Harley  Street, 
London,  W . 

c/o  DR.  ROBT.  LYNN, 

APPLEBROOK,  DEVON, 

May  6,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  HOUSEKEEPER, 

Twenty  years  ago  your  mother  and  I  came 
down  here  for  a  fortnight's  fishing  to  stay, 
just  as  we  are  staying  now,  and  in  the  same 
month,  too,  with  Bob  Lynn  and  his  wife.  I 
remember  that  we  wondered  for  quite  six  weeks 
if  we  could  properly  afford  to  do  this.  The 
house,  you  see — not  918,  but  the  tiny  one  at 
the  end  of  Devonshire  Street — had  been  so  very 
costly  in  its  demand  for  furniture,  for  rent,  for 
wear  and  tear.  The  practice  was  so  uncertain, 
seemed  so  desperately  slow  in  growing.  Was  it 
safe  to  leave  it  ?  Would  it  be  still  there  when  we 

returned  ?    And  if  not ? 

So  we  argued,  and  knew  all  the  time  that  there 
was  a  far  more  important  consideration  than  any 
of  these  tucked  away  in  the  upstairs  part  of  our 

109 


1 1  o         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

minds.  Was  it  safe  to  leave  her  at  only  ten 
months  old  ?  Would  she  know  us  again  when  we 
came  back  ?  Could  any  one  in  the  world  take 
a  great  enough  care  of  her  ? 

Perhaps  you  have  never  guessed  what  an  im- 
portant little  person  she  was ;  and  perhaps, 
even  now,  you  decline,  in  that  very  calm  and 
unimpassioned  habit  of  yours,  to  believe  it. 
But  that  must  be  because  you  have  never  properly 
studied  the  evidence.  I  wonder  if  you  have  ever 
seen,  for  instance,  the  clothes  that  she  wore — 
such  little  clothes,  but  just  look  at  them,  every 
stitch  as  delicate  as  a  tendril,  and  every  dimple 
and  pucker  as  soft  as  a  wild  bird's  nest.  There's 
never  more  than  one  person  in  the  world  who 
can  make  clothes  like  that ;  and  nobody,  not 
even  her  husband,  knows  where  she  learned  the 
secret.  And  if  this  were  only  the  husk,  what 
then  about  the  plump  little  kernel  inside  ? 

I  can  remember  the  long  discussions,  and  how 
at  last  two  cold-blooded  physicians,  the  one  in 
Devonshire  and  the  other  in  town,  had  their  own 
way,  and  forced  a  mother  from  her  babelet 
for  two  long,  if  health-giving,  weeks.  I  can 
remember  the  arrival  of  a  Miss  Sarah  Harding — 
admirablest  of  lay-mothers  (God  bless  them  all) — 
to  take  up  her  awful  charge  ;  and  the  hour  or  so 


To  Miss  Molly  Harding  1 1 1 

during  which  she  received  instructions  enough 
to  cause  a  less  iron  brain  to  melt  upon  its  pan. 
But  she  was  a  wonderful  woman  even  then,  and 
somebody  had  to  take  care  of  the  child. 

And  now,  with  a  trifling  difference  or  two, 
here's  history  repeating  itself  in  the  oddest  manner 
possible,  father  and  mother  flown  down  again 
to  Devonshire,  and  somebody  offering,  in  their 
absence,  to  take  care  of  Miss  Molly — but  for 
rather  longer  than  a  paltry  two  weeks ;  and 
please  what  do  we  think  of  it  ? 

By  the  same  post,  too,  comes  a  brief,  apologetic 
sort  of  letter  from  the  candidate  himself.  He 
had  meant  to  wait  for  another  year  or  so  before 
suggesting  himself  as  even  a  possible  caretaker, 
only  as  it  happened  last  night  at  Lady  Pearson's 
she  was  looking,  etc.  etc. — and  you  know  how 
these  things  will  get  the  better  of  a  chap,  etc. 
etc. — and,  well,  there  it  was,  don't  you  know  ; 
and  now  it  is  all  upon  the  knees  of  the  gods. 
Or  of  one  little  goddess,  did  he  mean  to  say  ? 
Because  that  of  course  is  where  it  really  is,  as 
you  both  know  very  well  indeed,  in  spite  of  your 
pretty  letters  to  us,  which  have  made  your 
mother  and  me  feel  at  once  very  elderly  and 
happy  and  anxious  (in  a  not  too  unpleasant  sense) 
and  also — do  you  mind  ? — vicariously  honoured. 


1 1 2        The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

I  doubt  if  I  am  looking  at  the  matter  quite  eye 
to  eye  with  the  W.S.P.U.  when  I  say  this ;  but 
you'll  have  to  forgive  me,  I  think,  especially 
as  it's  your  Daddy's  opinion  that  you  ask  for, 
and  not  theirs.  So  I'll  tell  you  just  what  I  felt 
when  I  read  your  letter,  and  comprehended  its 
tidings. 

1.  Dear  me,  is  she  really  as  old  as  that  ? 

2.  Then  what  am  I  ? 

3.  O  tempus  edax  rerum  ! 

4.  But  it's  really  rather  gratifying. 

5.  Because  after  all  there  are  so  many  nice  girls 
in  the  world. 

6.  And  yet  it's  my  girl  that  he  would  like  to 
marry. 

7.  Our  girl,  please.     (This  from  Esther.) 
You  see  how  primitive  we  become   in  these 

little  crises  of  life. 

And  I  think,  if  you  really  want  to  have  my  very 
particular  message  to  you  about  this,  it  is — don't 
mind  being  a  little  primitive  yourself. 

On  the  whole,  perhaps,  I  am  not  able  to  pre- 
scribe this  as  often  as  I  should  like  ;  and  chiefly 
because,  I  suppose,  the  young  couples  that  come 
to  me  for  an  opinion  on  matrimony  are  not  as  a 
rule  normal  young  couples.  They  have  usually 
been  sent,  that  is  to  say,  by  some  wise  or  anxious 


T0  Miss  Molly  Harding  1 1 3 

guardian  who  has  foreseen  for  them  some  prob- 
able disaster.  And  often  enough  I  have  had  to 
beseech  them  for  their  own  good  and  for  the 
unborn  others  to  let  their  reason  lay  aside  their 
passion — not  without  tears. 

Now,  I  believe  I  know  you  well  enough  to  be 
right  in  saying  that  the — shall  I  call  it  the  strictly 
eugenic  ? — side  of  the  question  is  not  likely  to 
suffer  from  your  neglect.  Newnham  and  the 
W.S.P.U.  will  have  taken  care  of  that.  Nor 
is  there  anything,  in  the  present  case,  to  trouble 
you  from  this  point  of  view.  For  Arthur  Lynn 
is  a  sound,  healthy,  athletic  young  man,  four 
years  your  senior,  of  good  stock  and  sufficiently 
satisfactory  means  and  prospects.  Both  physically 
and  in  every  other  way  he  would  be  a  desirable 
husband  for  you.  And  all  this,  as  I  gather  from 
your  letter,  you  have  been  very  carefully,  and  very 
rightly,  considering.  Moreover  you  can  be 
quite  sure — you  probably  are  quite  sure — that 
there  is  no  one  whom  your  mother  and  I  would 
sooner  have  for  a  son-in-law,  as  I  am  writing  to 
tell  him  this  evening. 

No,  my  dear,  I  don't  think  that  your  danger 
lies  in  a  too  slender  application  of  reason  to  the 
problem  before  you.  It  lurks,  if  anywhere,  in  a 
too  great  disregard  of  what  is  often  supposed  to 


114        ^h*  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

be  its  antithesis.  And  I  should  like  you  to  have 
written  to  me,  not  only  that  you  were  *  naturally 
pleased,  of  course,  if  a  little  perplexed,'  but 
that  you  were  thrilled.  To  which,  no  doubt,  you 
will  reply  that  in  the  first  place  you're  not  the 
sort  of  young  woman  that  indulges  in  thrills, 
and  in  the  second  that,  had  you  done  so,  you 
would  certainly  never  have  committed  the  fact  to 
paper.  But  I  should  have  read  it  between  the 
lines.  Ah,  Molly,  don't  ever  be  too  afraid  of 
thrills.  For  at  the  worst  (the  most  bourgeois) 
they  are  at  any  rate  evidences  of  life,  not  only 
within  but  without — some  all-pervading  force, 
short-circuited  for  a  moment  through  your  own 
awakened  consciousness  to  that  old,  old  world  on 
which  you  stand ;  while  at  the  best — well,  who 
shall  say  from  what  unseen  Vessel  the  current 
has  its  birth  ? 

Could  I  find  a  place  to  be  alone  with  heaven, 
I  would  speak  my  heart  out ;  heaven  is  my  need. 

Was  it  like  that  with  you,  Molly  ?  Because  that 
is  how  I  would  have  it  for  you,  my  dear.  And 
I  think  it  is  worth  waiting  for,  not  for  a  week 
only,  as  you  have  suggested  to  Arthur,  but  for 
far  longer  than  that.  You  will  tell  me,  very 
likely,  and  with  perfect  truth,  to  remember  that 


To  Miss  Molly  Harding  1 1  5 

wherever  marriages  may  be  said  to  have  their 
hypothetical  origin,  in  actual  practice  they  must 
needs  evolve  upon  earth.  And  that's  a  side  of  the 
question,  no  doubt,  that  a  good  many  people  are 
inclined  to  forget.  But  you're  not  one  of  them. 
And  I  should  like  you  to  give  Heaven  a  chance, 
not  only  for  your  own  sake,  but  for  your  future 
husband's,  whoever  he  may  ultimately  be.  Hus- 
bands need  a  little  halo,  you  see,  at  any  rate  to 
begin  with.  And  that's  why  I  should  like  you  to 
wait  awhile — say  six  months  or  so — even  at  the 
risk  of  causing  young  Lynn  a  little  gentle  (but 
quite  harmless)  unhappiness.  And  when — and 
if — he  comes  to  you  then  (for  you  mustn't  allow 
him  to  promise)  let  your  heart  have  no  doubt  in 
its  yes. 

Your  affect,  father, 

P.  H. 


To  Miss  Josephine  Summers,  The  Cottage, 
Potham,  Beds. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

May  16,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  AUNT  JOSEPHINE, 

It  is  certainly  very  wrong  of  Claire  not  to 
have  written  to  thank  you  for  the  mittens.  As  you 
say,  colds  in  the  head  are  quite  common  in  the 
months  of  May  and  June,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that 
if  she  wears  them,  as  you  suggest,  whenever  she 
goes  out  to  play,  they  will  keep  her  hands  very 
warm  indeed.  I  hope  that  you  will  hear  from  her 
in  a  day  or  two.  With  regard  to  the  vicar's  boy,  I 
think,  from  what  I  remember  of  him,  that  you 
can  quite  safely  leave  him  in  the  hands  of  the 
vicar's  very  wise  housekeeper  and  your  own  ex- 
cellent doctor.  I  doubt  too  if  he  would  ever 
really  constantly  wear  the  flannel  cholera-belt 
that  you  have  been  making  for  him  ;  and  in  any 
case,  I  think  a  temporary  abstinence  from 
butter-scotch  would  be  an  even  more  effective 
measure.  Your  doctor  is  quite  right  about  the 

1x6 


To  Miss  Josephine  Summers          117 

tomatoes.  There  is  no  evidence  to  show  that 
they  cause  cancer.  But  of  course  one  must  always 
be  careful  not  to  eat  too  many  of  them.  No, 
the  gravel  from  which,  I  am  sorry  to  hear, 
the  new  lay-reader  suffers  has  nothing  to  do  with 
that  which  is  found  in  gardens.  And  it  is  quite 
sufficient,  as  you  say,  to  account  for  a  little 
occasional  hastiness  in  his  temper.  We  are  all 
glad  to  hear  that  you  have  been  so  busy  and 
comparatively  well,  and  both  Esther  and  Molly 
join  me  in  sending  you  their  best  love. 
Your  affect,  nephew, 

PETER  HARDING. 


XVI 

To  Lady  Wroxton,  The  Manor  House,  Stoke 
Magna,  Oxon. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

May  23,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  LADY  WROXTON, 

I  was  very  glad,  as  were  we  all,  to  hear 
from  you  again  after  so  long  a  silence,  and 
gladder  still  to  learn  that  the  pleasant  peacef  ulness 
of  Stoke  is  doing  its  good  work  on  your  behalf 
so  surely,  if  still  a  little  slowly.  For  both  from 
your  own  letter  and  that  of  Dr.  Rochester  I 
can  see  that  the  spirit  of  you  is  climbing  back 
again  towards  the  light,  less  lonely  than  you 
would  have  thought  possible  six  months  ago, 
and  into  an  air  as  clear  even  as  that  which  you 
and  your  husband  breathed  together  before  he 
was  taken  from  you.  I  think  that  I  know  how 
hard  must  be  the  ascent,  although  in  my  own 
perhaps  too  peaceful  life  I  have  had  little  enough 
experience  of  these  swift  and  terrible  bereave- 
ments, that  will  come  to  me  also,  I  must  suppose, 
in  their  due  time.  And  it  is  only  from  the  share, 

li* 


To  Lady  Wroxton  119 

sometimes  completely  professional,  sometimes 
rather  more  intimate  than  this,  that  I  have  been 
called  upon  to  take  in  such  experiences  of  others 
that  I  seem  to  have  learned  a  very  little  about 
the  tides  of  grief. 

Looking  down  upon  the  dead  face,  touching  the 
cold  hand,  lifting  up  the  leaden  arm,  one  cannot 
help  feeling  how  utterly  dead  a  dead  man  looks, 
an  impression  enormously  deepened,  as  a  rule, 
by  the  circumstances  of  the  last  days.  For  in 
these  his  external,  his  spiritual  activities  have 
been,  of  necessity  almost,  set  aside,  and  perhaps 
temporarily  forgotten  in  the  paramount  appeals 
of  his  body  itself.  Now  this  organ,  now  that, 
must  be  attended  to,  supported,  cleansed,  stimu- 
lated, implored,  as  it  were,  to  fulfil  its  duty 
towards  the  struggling  economy  of  the  whole. 
And  as  an  almost  inevitable  result  their  slender 
responses,  their  final  refusals,  have  obsessed  both 
patient  and  friends  to  the  exclusion  of  everything 
else.  The  bodily  case,  so  long  taken  for  granted, 
and  now  so  fast  giving  way,  has  become  no 
longer  a  subordinate,  but  the  predominant  factor 
in  its  owner's  entity.  So  that  when  the  body, 
Imperator  et  Dux  of  these  later  hours,  at  length 
lays  down  its  sceptre,  it's  a  small  wonder  if  all 
else  has  appeared  to  die  with  it.  Nor  for  a  time 


1 20         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

can  the  formulae  of  the  churches  seem  anything 
but  unreal,  however  humbly  a  schooled  faith 
may  try  to  accept  their  verity.  The  dead  thing 
beneath  the  sheet  seems  to  weigh  down  the 
balance  with  a  fact  too  stark  for  disputation. 
Of  the  earth  earthy,  it  is  committed  to  the  earth, 
resolving  presently  into  its  elements — and  who 
shall  tell  its  number  any  more  ? 

Between  mere  friends,  the  friend  taken  and  the 
friend  left,  this  bodily  dissolution  has  perhaps  a 
less  grim  significance,  or  makes,  at  any  rate,  a 
smaller  demand  on  faith.  We  loved  our  friend 
for  his  ways,  his  wit,  his  kindliness,  his  character, 
and  not  very  particularly  for  his  cast  of  feature 
or  mould  of  physique.  But  where  friendship  has 
allied  itself  with  passion,  where  the  actual 
flesh  has  meant  much,  where  souls  have  spoken, 
not  only  in  sight  and  speech,  but  in  touch  and 
fast  embrace,  the  death  of  the  flesh  must  neces- 
sarily seem  to  involve  so  infinitely  more — 
enough  almost  to  justify  mediaeval  thought  in 
demanding,  for  its  consolation,  a  belief  in  the 
resurrection  of  the  body.  And  as  a  result  the 
well-meant  advice  of  physicians  and  friends  must 
appear  at  these  times  to  be  entirely  inadequate — 
I  was  almost  going  to  say  impertinent — because 
it  must  necessarily  be  only  half  informed. 


Ti?  Lady  Wroxton  121 

And  yet  I  am  not  sure  that  we,  standing  at  a 
distance  (and  perhaps  even  because  of  this), 
have  not,  after  all,  the  real  comfort  in  our  hands. 
To  you,  from  whose  close  touch  the  alabaster 
box  has  slipped,  its  breaking  has  seemed  to 
mean  the  end  of  all  things.  You  were  so  near  to 
it.  And  how  irreparable  was  its  fracture  no  eyes 
but  yours  could  tell.  So  what  can  we  others 
say  to  you  that  can  be  of  any  value  in  your 
sorrow  ? 

Well,  we  can  at  least  say  this — that  its  perfume 
is  still  upon  the  air,  its  real  gift  to  us  and  our  great 
and  permanent  possession.  It  may  be  easier 
for  us — his  mere  friends — to  declare  thus  that 
we  haven't  really  lost  him.  But  given  a  little 
time  it  will  become  possible  even  to  you,  who 
were  heart  of  his  heart.  And  if  there's  no  older 
— and  perhaps  colder — truism  than  this,  yet  it 
has  a  very  sound  and,  I  believe,  an  actually 
physical  basis.  For  if  we  grant,  as  we  needs 
must,  that  the  material  body  is  ever  changing, 
cell  replacing  cell  by  a  continuous  process  of 
wasting  and  repair,  so  that  the  substance  con- 
taining us  to-day  is  by  no  means  identical  with 
that  which  contained  us,  as  it  were,  yesterday, 
why  then  the  cells  that  called  out  for  the  physical 
sight  and  touch  of  those  other  cells  that  sur- 


122         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

rounded  him  we  loved  must  necessarily  pass  also 
upon  their  journey,  and  with  them,  to  a  very  great 
extent,  their  anguish  of  unsatisfied  desire.  This 
is  why,  I  think,  nothing  becomes  more  absolutely 
obliterated  than  a  dead  passion  that  has  been 
merely  bodily ;  and  why  also,  in  most  other 
cases  where  passion  has  been  a  factor,  the  diminu- 
tion of  grief  must  be  regarded  as  a  completely 
natural  process  and  one  that  implies  no  shadow 
of  disloyalty.  It  merely  means  that  the  sense 
of  loss  has  been  transferred  to  another  and 
more  spiritual  plane,  where,  lo !  it  even  ap- 
pears at  times  to  have  been  scarcely  a  loss  at 
all ;  but  instead  a  withdrawal,  so  obviously 
transient  as  to  be  itself  an  evidence  of  some 
certain,  if  incomprehensible  reunion.  With  his 
memories  so  thronging,  with  the  visible  and 
abiding  evidences  of  his  activities  so  implicit  in 
the  growth  of  his  successors,  how  little,  after  all, 
has  become  the  value  of  the  vessel  that  contained 
him !  Am  I  right  ?  Isn't  it  going  with  you 
somehow  in  this  fashion  ? 

But,  dear  me,  if  your  power  of  sleep  were  not 
returning  to  you  so  rapidly,  you  would  be 
imagining  this  some  subtle  form  of  prescription 
by  epistle. 

And  that  was  one  of  the  best  bits  of  news 


To  Lady  Wroxton  123 

in  your  letter,  besides  being  the  chief  reason 
why  you  mustn't,  I  think,  come  back  to  town 
just  yet,  even  at  the  risk  of  disappointing 
Hilary  and  Norah.  For  Sleep's  a  fickle  goddess 
when  she  once  goes  wandering,  and  the  way  to 
woo  her  home  is  not  to  woo  her  at  all.  Seek  her 
not,  and  she  will  come  stealing  back  to  you  round 
the  corner  to  know  the  reason  why.  And  there's 
no  place  like  the  country  and  some  quiet  garden 
therein  in  which  to  declare  your  war  of  inde- 
pendence. 

For,  as  I  told  you  before,  sleeplessness  per  se 
has  never  killed  anybody  yet ;  and  where  nothing 
but  the  rising  and  setting  of  stars,  and  the  opening 
and  closing  of  flowers  need  call  for  your  attention, 
you  can  very  comfortably  afford  to  snap  your 
fingers  at  it  in  defiance.  But  in  town  it  would  be 
different.  Your  days  would  become,  in  spite  of 
yourself,  so  automatically  exacting  that  you 
would  of  necessity  demand  respite  from  your 
nights — the  very  demand  that,  just  at  present, 
you  mustn't  be  obliged  to  make.  At  Stoke, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  doesn't  matter  (and  the 
more  you  insist  on  this  the  better),  it  doesn't 
matter  a  bit  where,  when,  or  how  much,  you 
sleep.  The  very  air  of  the  place  is  a  far  too 
bewitching,  and  incidentally  a  quite  adequate, 


1 24         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

substitute ;  while  for  dreams  you  have  the 
whole  cycle  of  field  and  garden  husbandry 
spread  out  before  your  eyes,  as  little  changing 
as  the  downs  themselves,  and  like  them  pretty 
nearly  "  half  as  old  as  time."  So  watch  it  for  a 
year,  day  in  and  day  out,  and  leave  the  turmoils 
and  telephones  of  London  to  such  unfortunate 
and  envious  friends  as  P.  H.,  of  medicinal 
memory. 

As  regards  the  girl  you  sent  up  to  me  from  the 
village  last  Friday,  I  have  taken  her  into  one  of 
my  wards  at  the  Hospital,  where  I  fancy  a  little 
careful  dieting  will  soon  set  her  right  again. 
At  the  same  time  I  may  take  the  opportunity  of 
examining  the  defaulting  organ  by  means  of  a 
very  ingenious  instrument  just  devised  by  two 
of  my  junior  colleagues.  It's  a  toy — it's  going 
to  be  much  more  than  that — that  would  have 
delighted  your  husband's  heart,  and  by  its  means, 
down  a  bent  tube,  inserted  through  her  mouth, 
fitted  with  a  tiny  electric  lamp  and  reflectors  at 
the  angles,  I  shall  be  able  not  only  to  peep  into 
her  stomach,  but  to  survey  it  as  thoroughly  and 
particularly  as  I  am  now  able  to  inspect  her 
tongue.  Even  so  do  the  youngsters  show  us  the 
way ! 

Yes,  you  are  quite  right.    Anaemia,  dyspepsia, 


To  La  fly  Wroxton  125 

gastric  ulcer  seem  to  be  the  special  afflictions  of 
the  under-housemaid.  And  it's  the  damnable 
habit  of  providing  her  with  "  kitchen "  tea, 
and  "  kitchen  "  butter,  and  "  kitchen  "  food  of 
all  sorts  that  is  largely  responsible  for  this,  not 
only  directly,  but  indirectly,  in  that  it  tempts  her 
to  indulge  in  various  kinds  of  unhealthy  in- 
between  meals.  Surely  the  servants  who  work  for 
us,  and  feed  us,  and  keep  us  clean,  should  be  at 
least  as  well  and  as  carefully  fed  as  ourselves, 
even  if  they  wouldn't  be  quite  happy,  perhaps,  to 
sit  at  our  own  tables.  And  the  careless  (and  I'm 
afraid  doubtful)  ladies  who  think  otherwise 
should  be  made  to  undergo  a  spell  of  domestic 
dieting  in  their  own  establishments. 

Esther  and  Molly,  who  are  at  home,  join  me  in 
sending  you  their  very  best  love  and  hopes  for  a 
near-at-hand  complete  recovery ;  and,  if  you 
can  really  put  up  with  them,  nothing  will 
make  Tom  and  Claire  happier  than  to  spend 
a  week  or  two  of  their  summer  holidays  at 
Stoke. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

PETER  HARDING. 

P.S. — You  must  try  to  forgive  me  for  this 
rambling  and  rather  inconsequent  letter,  but  I 


126         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

have  been  both  inflicting  and  enduring,  for  the 
last  ten  days,  a  superfluity  of  full-dress  lectures. 
So  I  have  been  writing  to  you,  as  a  result,  in  my 
mental  shirtsleeves. 


XVII 

To  Miss  Sarah  Harding,  The  Orphanage,  Little 
Blessington,  Dorset. 

HOTEL  MODERNS,  LOURDES, 

June  7,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  SALLY, 

I  have  just  encountered  one  of  those 
strange  half-accidents  that  crop  up  like  rocks 
in  the  quiet  stream  of  one's  everyday  life  just 
where  a  rock  is  the  least  likely  to  be.  You  turn 
the  bend  from  Tuesday  into  Wednesday,  and 
hey  presto,  before  you  know  what's  happened, 
your  little  canoe  has  been  shot  out  of  the  main 
current  into  some  unsuspected  channel,  whence 
it  emerges  presently  as  from  a  waking  dream. 

Last  week  as  I  went  into  the  club  between  an 
afternoon  at  the  hospital  and  two  evening  visits 
in  Kensington,  I  met  Bettany,  of  whom  you 
may  perhaps  have  heard  me  speak.  A  quite 
successful  Government  official,  he  contrives  also 
to  edit  one  of  the  leading  Roman  Catholic  news- 
papers and  incidentally  to  organise  with  con- 
spicuous ability  periodical  pilgrimages  to  various 

127 


128         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

Continental  shrines.  He  is  a  man  who  has  always 
interested  me,  partly  because  he  has  seemed  to  me 
to  possess  in  a  very  marked  degree  one  of  the 
strongest  and  most  challenging  characteristics 
of  his  Church — the  habit,  even  in  matters  of 
religion,  of  completely  dissociating  the  man  from 
his  function.  A  ladder  for  the  faith  of  other 
people  need  not  necessarily  have  any  faith  of 
its  own — and  be  an  extremely  serviceable  ladder 
for  all  that.  In  his  particular  case,  a  belief  in 
the  miraculous  powers  of  those  relics  and  waters 
to  which  he  enables  the  faithful  so  comfortably 
to  travel,  is  not,  I  think,  de  fide — demanded  by 
his  Church.  In  any  case  he  does  not  possess  it, 
but  regards  the  whole  phenomenon  through  his 
gold-rimmed  spectacles  with  an  entirely  amiable, 
and  of  course  very  discreet,  scepticism.  At  the 
same  time  his  talent  for  organisation  and  his 
unique  knowledge  of  Continental  hotels  and 
railways  are  entirely  at  the  disposal  of  his  more 
credulous  brethren.  And  his  name  must  be  known 
in  this  connection  to  many  thousands  of  Catholics 
on  both  sides  of  the  Channel. 

On  this  particular  evening  he  told  me  that  he 
was  extremely  busy  making  the  final  arrangements 
for  what  promised  to  be  the  largest  English 
pilgrimage  that  has  yet  travelled  to  Lourdes. 


T0  Miss  Sarah  Harding  129 

And  then,  remembering  suddenly,  I  suppose, 
that  I  was  a  doctor  of  medicine,  he  sat  bolt  up- 
right and  said,  "  By  George,  you're  the  very  man 
that  can  help  me."  For  it  seemed  that  there  were 
so  many  invalids  going  out  with  the  party — at 
least  forty,  he  told  me — some  of  whom  were  in  a 
very  bad  way,  that  it  had  appeared  desirable 
to  take  a  medical  man  in  case  of  emergencies 
upon  the  long  journey.  And  did  I  know  of  any- 
one who  would  care  to  go  ?  He  had  already 
made  some  inquiries,  he  said,  among  Catholic 
medical  friends,  but  hadn't  as  yet  found  anyone 
who  had  been  able  to  undertake  the  duties. 
He  was  not  in  a  position  to  offer  anything  more 
than  travelling  expenses ;  and  he  was  beginning, 
as  a  consequence,  to  feel  rather  doubtful  about 
finding  a  man  in  time.  It  was  not  essential,  he 
considered,  that  the  accompanying  physician 
should  be  himself  a  Catholic,  provided  that  he 
was  reasonably  sympathetic  ;  and  then,  reading 
my  thoughts,  I  suppose,  he  asked  me  if  I  should 
be  sufficiently  interested  to  make  the  little 
trip  myself. 

Well  at  first,  of  course,  this  seemed  quite  out  of 
the  question  ;  but  on  looking  through  my  engage- 
ments I  began  to  think  that  with  a  certain 
amount  of  arrangement  it  might  become  possible 


130         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

after  all.  We  were  to  leave  Charing  Cross  at 
ten  o'clock  on  Friday  morning,  and  would  be 
home  by  the  following  Thursday  night.  And 
it  was  to  be  quite  understood  that  I  was  coming 
not  as  an  official,  but  only  as  a  visitor  who  would 
be  willing,  if  necessary,  to  render  aid  en  route — 
all  of  which  goes  to  account  for  the  address 
upon  my  notepaper,  and  the  fact  that  I  seem  at 
this  moment  to  be  very  much  more  than  eight 
hundred  miles  from  Harley  Street. 

Joining  the  train  at  Charing  Cross,  it  was  quite 
obvious  to  me  that  a  very  considerable  proportion 
of  the  party  was  Irish — the  sing-song  western 
accent  was  everywhere — and  that  a  comparatively 
large  number  of  priests  would  be  travelling  with 
us.  Most  of  these  I  have  since  discovered  to  be 
genial,  even  hilarious,  souls,  drawn,  as  it  appears, 
from  every  stratum  of  society,  and  differing,  as  a 
consequence,  very  greatly  both  in  real  education 
and  superficial  polish. 

It  was  not  until  we  got  on  board  at  Folkestone 
that  I  had  a  first  opportunity  of  becoming  ac- 
quainted with  the  sick  people  of  the  assembly ; 
and  by  this  time  I  was  already  conscious  of 
being  surrounded  by  some  curious,  indefinable 
atmosphere,  that  was  walling  us  away  from  what 
to  me,  with  my  half-Protestant,  half-scientific 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  1 3 1 

upbringing,  represented  the  everyday  world. 
I  doubt  if  many  of  my  fellow-pilgrims  felt  this. 
But  I  am  certain  that  the  other  passengers  on 
the  boat  did.  And  it  was  both  odd  and  a  trifle 
amusing  to  observe  the  blank  expressions  upon 
numerous  well-fed  and  monocled  countenances 
on  their  way  to  a  normal  Paris.  Yet  from  my 
own  point  of  view  I  had  to  admit  that  there  was  a 
good  deal  of  excuse  for  them.  For  we  might  all, 
as  it  seemed  to  me,  very  easily  have  stepped  out 
of  the  Middle  Ages. 

Of  the  more  obvious  invalids  there  were  none, 
as  far  as  I  could  see,  who  stood  the  smallest 
chance  of  benefiting,  in  a  material  sense,  from 
their  visit  to  Lourdes.  There  were  two  blind 
girls,  both  cases  of  congenital  organic  disease — 
and  who  both  chanced,  by  the  way,  to  be  among 
the  very  few  sufferers  from  sea-sickness.  There 
was  a  little  boy  from  a  Sussex  village,  a  case  of 
infantile  paralysis,  brought  by  his  mother  in  the 
fervent  hope,  as  she  told  me,  that  Our  Lady  would 
use  him  as  a  means  to  convert  an  extremely 
Nonconformist  community.  There  was  an  older 
girl,  similarly  affected ;  and  an  elderly  man, 
travelling  quite  alone,  in  almost  the  last  stages 
of  cancer  of  the  throat.  With  this  poor  fellow, 
who  was  almost  too  weak  to  stand  unaided, 


132         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

I  had  a  long  and  very  pathetic  conversation. 
He  knew  himself  to  be  past  all  human  aid,  and 
was  journeying  from  his  home  on  the  east  coast 
to  the  shrine  upon  the  Gave  as  to  his  last  anchor- 
age upon  life.  And  I  doubt,  even  so,  if  he  had 
any  real  belief  in  its  efficacy  for  himself.  But  his 
journey,  a  really  enormous  effort  for  a  man  in 
his  condition,  wjuld  at  any  rate  show  that  he 
had  had  courage  enough  to  make  the  trial.  His 
is  the  only  case  that  has  given  me  cause  for  any 
immediate  anxiety,  and  were  it  not  for  his  extra- 
ordinary pluck  and  will-power  I  should  be  more 
than  doubtful  about  getting  him  home  alive. 

Of  the  other  invalids,  none  were  sufficiently 
apparent  to  disclose  themselves  to  me  in  a  cursory 
tour  round  the  ship  with  Bettany ;  and  after 
making  the  poor  cancer  patient  as  cosy  as  possible 
in  the  special  train  that  was  waiting  for  us  at 
Boulogne,  I  repaired  to  the  very  comfortable 
carriage  reserved  for  us,  and  shared  an  excellent 
lunch  with  Bettany,  his  lady  secretary,  and 
another  member  of  the  committee.  The  journey 
to  Paris  was  uneventful,  and  after  manoeuvring 
round  its  southern  suburbs,  we  found  ourselves 
about  seven  o'clock  in  the  Gare  d'Orleans, 
where  a  portion  of  the  refreshment-room  had 
been  reserved  for  our  dinner.  During  this  meal 


70  Miss  Sarah  Harding  133 

I  was  introduced  by  Bettany  to  the  Bishop  who  is 
leading  the  pilgrimage — one  of  those  rare  men 
of  whose  essential  saintliness  one  becomes  in- 
stantly aware,  yet  a  man,  too,  of  abundant 
strength,  and  one,  as  I  have  since  found  out, 
capable  of  ensuring,  with  the  profoundest  per- 
sonal humility,  the  utmost  tribute  of  respect  to 
the  high  office  that  he  represents.  I  suppose 
every  Church  contains  such  men.  It  is  at  any 
rate  pleasant  to  think  so.  But  not  all  are  wise 
enough  to  make  them  bishops — and  missionary 
bishops  at  that. 

The  same  train  left  Paris  with  us  about  nine 
o'clock  on  the  long  journey  to  Lourdes ;  and 
after  some  desultory  conversation  we  made  our- 
selves comfortable  for  the  night.  Fortunately, 
since  our  train  was  not  of  the  corridor  type,  the 
sick  persons  seemed  to  settle  down  pretty  easily, 
and  the  chief  impressions  that  remain  to  me  of 
the  journey  are  a  peep  into  a  cool  and  cloudless 
sunrise  over  some  vineyards  between  Poitiers  and 
Angouleme  and  a  very  satisfactory  cafe  complet 
at  Bordeaux.  Two  or  three  times  during  the 
morning,  both  before  and  after  reaching  this 
place,  we  were  jeered  at  by  onlookers  at  various 
wayside  stations,  who  had  read  the  inscription 
Pelerinage  upon  our  carriage  ;  and  one  or  two  of 


134        The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

these  had  even  gone  so  far  as  to  throw  stones. 
They  were  reminders,  I  suppose,  that  here  in 
Lourdes  seem  almost  incredible,  of  the  enormous 
extent  to  which  the  anti-clerical  movement  has 
permeated  elsewhere  in  France.  The  latter 
part  of  our  journey,  climbing  slowly  into  the 
Pyrenees,  was  enlivened  for  us  by  the  presence  of 
the  Bishop,  who  had  given  up  his  own  carriage 
to  some  indignant  Irish  pilgrims  that  had  been  so 
unfortunate  as  to  have  spent  a  sleepless  night. 
Haymaking  was  already  in  full  swing  in  these 
steaming  valleys,  with  men  and  boys  and  bare- 
legged, brown-faced  women  all  backs  down  over 
what  seems  to  be  a  very  plentiful  crop. 
•  •  •  •  • 

I  have  just  here  been  tapped  on  the  shoulder 
by  an  immaculately  apparelled  American 
Catholic,  who  has  just  joined  the  pilgrimage 
from  Florence.  He  had  learned,  he  told  me, 
that  I  was  a  physician  willing  to  oblige.  He 
suffered  a  little  from  gout,  he  said^  and  then 
proceeded  to  pose  me  with  the  rather  difficult 
question  as  to  how  often  he  ought  to  take  the 
waters. 

I  explained  to  him  that,  as  far  as  I  knew,  these 
have  none  but  an  ethical  value — a  reply  that 
obviously  puzzled  him. 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  1 3  5 

"  You  mean,"  he  inquired  at  last,  "  that  it's 
ENtirely  a  matter  of  faith  ?  " 

"  Precisely,"  I  answered,  and  his  brow  cleared 
a  little. 

"  Do  you  think  I  might  have  a  Seidlitz  powder 
to  go  on  with  ?  "  he  asked. 


We  arrived  at  Lourdes  at  about  four  o'clock 
on  Saturday  afternoon,  after  just  thirty  hours' 
travelling,  and  landed  into  a  seething  tumult  of 
departing  pilgrims,  bullock-wagons,  carriages,  and 
electric  trams.  Losing  sight  of  Bettany,  I  found 
myself  looking  vaguely  round  for  some  kind  of 
conveyance,  in  company  with  the  Bishop  and  his 
chaplain  ;  and  between  us  we  managed  to  secure 
also  a  seat  for  our  poor  fellow-traveller  from 
Essex,  for  whom  we  afterwards  discovered  a 
moderately  quiet  bedroom  in  our  hotel. 

After  tea,  the  Bishop  asked  me  to  accompany 
him  in  a  stroll  round  the  town  and  shrine,  during 
which  I  learned  a  little  about  Lourdes,  and  a 
good  deal  about  my  companion.  Half-way  be- 
tween the  plains  and  the  higher  ranges  of  the 
Pyrenees,  Lourdes  itself  lies  in  a  valley,  bisected 
by  the  Gave,  a  tumbling  mountain  stream  that 
supplies  the  holy  water  to  the  grotto  and  the 


1 3  6        T'he  Corner  of  Har/ey  Street 

piscines,  or  invalid  baths.  The  town  itself,  with 
its  narrow,  winding  streets,  strung,  as  it  were, 
between  the  fourteenth-century  chateau  on  the 
one  side  and  the  nineteenth-century  church  that 
surmounts  the  shrine,  on  the  other,  is  quite  the 
most  remarkable  combination  of  medievalism  and 
modernity  that  I  have  seen ;  while  its  crowded, 
ever-changing  population  must  be,  I  suppose,  the 
saddest,  oddest,  and  perhaps  the  most  unique  in 
both  the  hemispheres.  As  we  walked  down  to- 
wards the  shrine,  we  met  returning  most  of  those 
who  had  gathered  round  the  great  square  for  the 
daily  blessing  of  the  sick ;  and  passing  through 
them  we  must  have  heard,  I  should  think,  almost 
every  dialect  of  Europe,  Flemish  perhaps  pre- 
dominant, since  this  was  the  last  day  of  a  great 
Belgian  pilgrimage,  but  German,  Italian,  English, 
Spanish,  and  of  course  French,  at  nearly  every 
step. 

Every  now  and  again,  too,  some  ardent  man  or 
woman,  seeing  the  big  amethyst  ring  on  my 
friend's  finger,  would  kneel  down  to  kiss  it  and 
receive  his  blessing,  caring  nothing  for  his  differ- 
ence of  language  and  nationality,  and  everything 
for  his  holy  office  in  their  common  church.  Once 
or  twice  he  smiled  gently  when  they  had  gone 
their  fervent  way,  clasping  their  votive  candles 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  137 

or  little  bottles  of  sacred  mountain  water,  and 
once  I  ventured  to  press  him  a  trifle  as  to  his 
personal  faith  in  the  Lourdes  miracles.  But  he 
was  a  statesman,  as  I  discovered,  no  less  than  a 
saint,  and  would  confess  to  no  more  than  a 
belief  that  these  dear  people  obtained  perhaps  a 
score  of  spiritual  to  each  merely  temporal  favour. 
And  surely  these  were  after  all  the  better  ? 

The  actual  grotto,  where  fifty-two  years  ago 
the  little  Bernadette  saw  her  visions  of  the  Blessed 
Mary,  lies  now  about  a  hundred  yards  from  the 
river's  edge,  along  which  a  palisaded  embankment 
has  been  built,  that  is  apt  however,  after  sudden 
storms,  to  be  pretty  often  under  water.  It  is 
really  a  cave  set  in  a  large  rock  around  which, 
one  above  the  other,  have  since  been  built  three 
churches,  the  topmost,  with  its  tall  and  slender 
spire,  being  perhaps  the  most  prominent  land- 
mark for  a  good  many  miles  around.  With  its 
walls  polished  by  the  elbows  and  fingers  of  count- 
less thousands  of  pilgrims,  this  little  cavern  con- 
tains an  altar  before  which,  in  the  open  air,  are 
ranged  several  rows  of  seats  for  worshippers  at 
the  shrine,  and  where,  as  I  afterwards  learned 
from  a  disappointed  Irish  priest,  it  is  considered 
a  very  special  privilege  to  say  Mass. 

Next  to  the  grotto  are  the  baths,  where  the 


The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 


sick  are  immersed,  and  from  which  bottles  of  the 
holy  water  can  be  carried  away  to  all  parts  of  the 
world  ;  and  to  the  left  and  above  this  is  the  great 
church,  the  lowest  and  largest  of  the  three  that 
now  surmount  the  rock.  The  entrance  to  this 
church  stands  upon  a  broad  terrace  above  the 
immense  open  amphitheatre,  about  which,  in  a 
circle  some  half  a  mile  in  circumference,  gather 
the  sick  people  and  their  helpers  and  relations  for 
the  afternoon  passing  of  the  Host.  It  is  at  this 
ceremony  that  the  majority  of  the  miracles  take 
place,  of  which,  I  suppose,  the  crutches,  splints, 
spinal  jackets,  and  other  surgical  appliances  that 
hang  rusting  among  the  wild  geraniums  over  the 
entrance  to  the  grotto  are  to  be  taken  as  partial 
evidences. 

There  were  still  some  poor  sufferers  waiting 
outside  the  piscines,  and  a  few  others  praying 
before  the  grotto  ;  and  pausing  for  a  moment  to 
watch  them  and  the  various  passers-by,  one  could 
not  help  being  very  forcibly  struck  with  the  all- 
pervading  atmosphere  of  pity.  Sights  that  else- 
where  would  have  been  veiled  from  the  daylight 
are  here  frankly  exposed,  not  to  a  kind  of  shud- 
dering, if  sympathetic  horror,  but  as  pitiful, 
broken  flowers  to  be  gathered  up,  and  laid  with 
prayers  upon  the  altar  of  mercy.  We  concluded 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  139 

our  little  tour  with  a  visit  to  the  Bureau  des  Con- 
testations, the  offices  where  the  doctors  attached 
to  the  grotto — one  of  them  an  Englishman — 
receive  and  classify  the  histories  of  the  cures, 
examine  the  alleged  miracules,  deprecating  the 
excited  allegations  of  some,  postponing  their  ver- 
dicts upon  others,  and  recording  what  seem  to 
them,  among  a  host  of  claims,  to  be  genuine  cases 
of  Divine  interposition.  Both  the  doctors  present 
when  we  arrived,  and  to  whom  Bettany,  who  had 
joined  us,  now  introduced  me,  were  extremely 
courteous  and  only  too  anxious  to  lay  before  me 
all  the  material  at  their  command.  Both,  as  I 
could  see  at  once,  were  men  accustomed  to  deal 
with  human  nature  of  the  type  and  under  the 
conditions  that  Lourdes  presents,  and  it  was 
therefore  with  very  great  diffidence  that  I  found 
myself  even  mentally  criticising  their  results. 
Nevertheless  it  is  true,  I  think,  that  nothing  ap- 
proaching to  ordinary,  exact  scientific  observa- 
tion, as  the  modern  medical  world  understands  it, 
is  carried  out  at  Lourdes ;  I  doubt  indeed  if  it 
would  be  possible ;  and  I  saw  no  instance,  either 
then  or  later,  of  a  Lourdes  cure  that  could  not 
be  explained  upon  the  observed  and  established 
lines  of  mental  suggestion,  or,  apart  from  this, 
could  bear  a  thorough  cross-examination.  Need- 


140         T'be  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

less  to  say,  the  two  doctors,  both  ardent  and  de- 
vout Roman  Catholics,  entirely  disagreed  with  me, 
and  assured  me  that  after  twenty  years  at  the 
shrine  they  were  only  the  more  convinced  of  Our 
Lady's  blessed  and  material  favours.  And  perhaps, 
after  all,  it  is  merely  a  question  of  terminology. 

But  it  is  not  until  one  has  actually  seen  the 
procession  of  the  Host  at  the  afternoon  service 
in  the  amphitheatre  that  one  has  penetrated,  as 
it  were,  into  the  very  heart  of  Lourdes.  And  so 
it  was  not,  perhaps,  until  three  o'clock  on  the  next 
afternoon  that  I  found  myself  laid  under  the  full 
power  of  the  strange,  half-intoxicating,  half- 
repellent  spell  of  this  almost  passionately  fervent 
and  yet  at  the  same  time  strangely  commercial 
factory  of  miracles.  All  the  morning,  ever  since 
the  very  early  hours,  special  trains  had  been 
rolling  into  the  station,  carrying,  as  we  learned  at 
breakfast,  a  pilgrimage,  ten  thousand  strong, 
from  the  towns  and  villages  of  Toulouse.  At 
every  turn  we  met  them,  groups  of  swarthy,  and 
for  the  most  part  stunted,  men  and  women, 
with  sombre,  toil-worn  faces,  yet  lit,  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  with  a  deep-burning  and  almost 
apostolic  faith.  Gathered  about  their  parish 
priests,  buying  rosaries  and  trinkets,  little  images 
of  Bernadette  Soubirous  (sold  by  her  numerous 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  141 

relatives,  most  of  whom  have  already,  in  one 
way  and  another,  made  considerable  fortunes  out 
of  her  vision),  they  filled  the  narrow  streets  to 
overflowing,  ardent,  undoubting,  agog  for  the 
least  whisper  of  some  strange  and  fortunate 
miracle.  And  needless  to  say  such  whispers  were 
plentiful  enough.  Just  before  noon,  for  instance, 
an  apple-faced  sister,  collecting  money  from  the 
more  prosperous  visitors  at  such  hotels  as  ours 
for  the  free  hostelries  that  are  open  elsewhere  to 
the  poor,  told  us  with  beaming  smiles  of  a  poor 
girl,  with  a  large  ulcer  upon  her  arm  that  had 
resisted  all  treatment  for  years.  Last  night  she 
had  dipped  it  into  the  waters,  and  lo,  this  morn- 
ing the  disease  had  utterly  vanished,  and  her  skin 
was  as  the  skin  of  a  little  child  !  There  is  a  young 
priest  here,  a  fine,  upstanding  fellow,  who  is  a 
qualified  doctor,  and  has  been  a  house-surgeon  at 
one  of  our  London  hospitals.  He  is  trying  hard, 
I  can  see,  to  square  his  scientific  prejudices,  as 
he  would  call  them,  with  his  religious  desire  to 
believe  in  these  miracles.  And  at  this  he  turned 
to  me  with  something  of  triumph. 

"  If  we  could  only  find  her  out  now,"  he  said, 
"  how  would  you  account  for  that  ?  '' 

But  on  closer  inquiry  we  discovered,  alas,  that 
the  sister  had  not  herself  seen  the  ulcer  before 


142         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

the  cure  was  wrought ;  and  later  on  in  the  day 
the  doctors  at  the  bureau  assured  me  that  no 
reports  of  such  an  incident  had  reached  them. 
And  we  never  succeeded  in  finding  the  girl, 
although  the  rumour  of  her  cure  had  already 
spread  like  wildfire,  and  will  soon,  no  doubt,  be 
reported  as  a  definite  miracle  in  cottages  a  thou- 
sand miles  from  here. 

In  such  an  atmosphere  then,  and  under  a  cloud- 
less, burning  sky,  we  gathered  in  the  afternoon, 
some  fourteen  thousand  strong,  in  a  vast  circle 
before  the  steps  of  the  grotto  church.  Quite 
early  the  brancardiers,  a  self-appointed  order  of 
workers,  who  assist  in  transporting  the  sick,  had 
been  busy  bringing  their  charges  to  the  great 
square  ;  so  that  the  innermost  row  of  the  waiting 
host  was  already  entirely  composed  of  sufferers 
praying  to  be  healed.  Marching  up  and  down 
before  them,  clad  in  their  robes  of  office,  were 
the  various  priests  who  had  come  with  them,  tell- 
ing their  beads,  and  invoking  the  multitudes  to 
prayer.  As  doctor  to  our  own  little  party,  Bettany 
enabled  me  to  step  within  the  ring,  and  walking 
with  him,  before  the  service,  I  made  a  slow 
round  of  the  circle,  beholding  such  a  clinic  as 
could  be  seen,  I  suppose,  nowhere  else  in  the 
world — the  clinic  of  Our  Lady  of  Lonrdes,  and 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  143 

one  that  seemed  to  me  to  contain,  on  this  par- 
ticular afternoon,  pretty  nearly  every  malady 
under  the  sun. 

"  Seigneur,  Seigneur,  ayez  pitie  de  moi." 
"  Mein  Herr  und  mein  Gott."  "  Lord  save  us, 
or  we  perish."  "  Hail,  Mary,  blessed  among 
women."  "  Seigneur,  Seigneur,  ayez  pitie  de 
moi."  In  every  tongue,  as  we  walked  round,  the 
age-old  cries  for  mercy  rang  in  our  ears,  from  a 
faith  that  it  was  impossible  to  doubt,  and  from  a 
depth  of  human  need  that  here,  at  any  rate, 
nothing  short  of  the  Divine  might  satisfy. 

Presently,  just  as  we  had  made  our  way  back 
to  our  own  little  party,  of  whom  many,  hitherto 
unsuspected,  had  now,  by  kneeling  in  the  front 
row,  tacitly  declared  themselves  to  be  in  need  of 
physical  healing,  a  new  and  solemn  sound  began 
to  break  upon  our  ears — the  sonorous  chanting 
of  men's  voices  on  the  way  up  from  the  grotto  in 
a  long  and  slow  procession.  "  Ave,  Ave,  Ave 
Maria,"  marching  four  abreast  they  now  came 
into  sight,  bearing  lighted  candles  in  their  hands, 
and  in  an  apparently  endless  succession,  to  turn 
presently  into  the  great  empty  space  about  which 
the  rest  of  us  were  gathered.  Up  the  centre  of 
this  they  now  marched,  all  the  able-bodied  men 
of  the  Toulouse  pilgrimage,  accompanied  by 


144        The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

many  of  their  priests,  singing  the  Lourdes  hymn, 
and  massing  themselves  at  last  upon  the  broad 
terrace  before  the  grotto  church.  Some  twenty 
minutes  it  must  have  taken  for  them  thus  to 
file  past  us ;  and  finally,  under  a  canopy  borne 
by  four  stalwart  attendants,  came  the  officiating 
priest,  clad  in  his  heavy  and  gorgeous  robes,  and 
bearing  before  him  the  golden,  flame-shaped 
monstrance  in  whose  centre  rested,  as  all  this 
expectant  gathering  believed,  the  actual  and 
visible  body  of  the  Christ  Himself.  As  they 
passed  us  I  could  see  that  the  arduous  task,  under 
this  thrilling  June  sun,  of  thus  holding  up  his 
Saviour  to  each  of  these  thousand  sufferers  had 
fallen  to  our  own  Bishop— the  highest  dignitary 
of  the  Church,  I  suppose,  who  happens  just  now 
to  be  in  Lourdes.  As  he  moved  slowly  up  the 
centre  of  the  hot  amphitheatre  the  cries  of  the 
poor  malades  and  their  friends  redoubled  them- 
selves in  ardour.  "  Seigneur,  Seigneur,  ayez  pitie 
de  moi."  The  tides  of  adoration  rose  and  fell 
and  rose  again  until,  as  step  by  step  he  passed 
along  the  circle,  they  climbed  up  to  a  crest  of 
almost  agonising  entreaty.  "  Lord,  save  us. 
Lord,  save  us,  or  we  perish."  To  left  and  right 
we  could  hear  the  broken  voices  sobbing  their 
prayers  to  God,  and  even  among  our  more  stolid 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  145 

English  sufferers  could  see  the  tears  running  down 
the  uplifted  worshipping  faces.  Watching  the 
Bishop,  as  at  last,  after  perhaps  half  an  hour, 
his  laboured  progress  brought  him  opposite  to 
ourselves,  I  could  not  help  feeling  how  great 
must  be  the  burden  now  bearing  upon  his  shoul- 
ders, since  apart  from  the  actual  physical  strain, 
the  continual  stooping,  in  his  thick  robes  and  with 
his  heavy  monstrance,  over  patient  after  patient 
in  this  thunderous  heat,  the  emotional  tax  must 
have  been  enormous.  For  upon  him  and  That 
which  he  bore  there  impinged  now  the  whole 
sum  of  these  heart-wrung  supplications.  Upon 
his  vicarious  shoulders  he  must  carry,  as  it  were, 
the  multitudinous  petitions  of  all  these  kneeling 
thousands.  And  yet  it  was  just  this,  as  after- 
wards, in  the  cool  of  the  hotel,  he  assured  me, 
that  was  his  chief  support.  Upborne  by  all  this 
simple  and  unshakable  belief,  it  was  only  then 
that  he  was  beginning  to  feel  the  bodily  weariness 
that  the  long  procession  had  entailed  upon  him. 
So  step  by  step  he  passed  upon  his  way,  until, 
more  than  an  hour  later,  the  long  round  had 
been  at  last  completed.  And  it  was  then,  in  a 
momentary  silence  that  followed  the  conclusion 
of  his  passage,  that  from  the  far  end  of  the  circle 
a  little  cry  arose,  and  a  woman,  bedridden,  as  we 


146          'The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

afterwards  learned,  for  more  than  fourteen  years, 
rose  up  from  her  chair,  and  tottered  out  into  the 
space  before  her.  Instantly  the  cry  was  every- 
where abroad,  "  A  miracle,  a  miracle "  ;  and 
like  a  leaf  on  the  wind  of  ten  thousand  shoulders, 
she  was  being  borne  in  an  ecstasy  of  triumph  to- 
wards the  Bureau  des  Constatations. 

It  was  here,  an  hour  later,  that  I  saw  her,  a 
gentle-faced,  devout  little  peasant  woman,  about 
whose  past  history  the  evidence  seemed  fairly 
conclusive.  Smiling  at  us,  she  took  a  few  steps 
across  the  room  among  the  uplifted  hands  and 
eager  exclamations  of  the  assembled  priests. 
But,  alas,  there  would  appear  to  be  no  physical 
reason  why  she  should  not  have  walked  thus  at 
any  time  during  her  invalid  years,  if  only  some 
stimulus,  sufficiently  effective,  had  been  applied 
to  her  before. 

Making  my  way  slowly  back  to  the  hotel  for  tea, 
I  was  touched  on  the  arm  by  a  young  French 
priest  to  whom  I  had  spoken  earlier  in  the  day. 
He  had  been  lamenting  the  great  wave  of  godless- 
ness  that  has  seemed  for  the  moment  to  submerge 
the  whole  of  France.  But  now  his  eyes  were 
shining.  "  Is  it  not  wonderful,"  he  cried,  "  to 
see  all  this  so  great  faith  ?  "  He  moved  his  hands 
expressively.  "  Ah,  la  belle  France,  the  heart  of  her 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  147 

people  is  still  hungry  for  its  God — and  some  day 
— some  day  it  will  lift  Him  up  again  for  all  the 
world  to  see."  And  in  the  evening  I  saw  him 
once  again  at  what  was  perhaps,  after  all,  the 
great  climax  of  the  Lourdes  day. 

Sipping  my  coffee  with  Bettany  at  a  small 
boulevard  near  the  hotel,  we  had  already  seen 
hundreds  of  little  points  of  flame  gathering  out 
of  the  growing  darkness  towards  the  grotto  and 
its  churches.  And  this  evening  procession  of 
candle-bearing  pilgrims  marks  perhaps  the  last 
word — if  I  may  quite  reverently  put  it  so — in 
the  stage-management  of  Lourdes.  For  at  a 
given  signal  not  only  do  a  thousand  slender  lamps 
pencil  out  in  gold  and  red  and  blue  the  uplifted 
tapering  spire  and  every  arch  and  pinnacle  of  the 
church  upon  the  rock ;  but  a  couple  of  miles 
away,  and  three  thousand  feet  high  on  the  crest 
of  the  Pic  du  Ger,  a  great  cross,  illuminated  by 
a  battery  from  the  town,  springs  suddenly  out 
into  the  sky.  The  outline  of  the  hill  itself,  and 
behind  it  the  snow-clad,  retreating  summits  of 
the  higher  Pyrenees  have  long  since  been  blotted 
away  in  the  night ;  so  that  now  this  gleaming 
cross  shines  out  among  the  stars,  among  which  it 
might  well  be  some  new  and  glorious  constellation. 
To  many,  indeed,  among  the  more  ignorant  of  the 


1 48         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

processionists  it  must  in  itself  savour  strongly  of 
the  miraculous ;  and  in  any  case,  swung  there 
in  the  southern  sky,  it  lends  a  note,  a  little 
bizarre  perhaps,  and  yet,  in  its  way,  extraordin- 
arily impressive,  to  the  general  vision  of  Lourdes 
by  night. 

Presently  the  long  procession  has  formed  itself, 
and  now  begins  to  move  from  the  grotto  out 
towards  the  big  statue  of  the  Virgin  at  the  op- 
posite end  of  the  square  (itself  lit  up  with 
coloured  fairy  lamps)  and  thence,  a  river  of  light 
in  the  soft  June  darkness,  through  the  rocky 
defile,  where  are  represented  the  seven  stations 
of  the  Cross.  And  as  it  passes  onwards  the  hymn 
once  more  swells  up  to  us  in  a  hundred  keys  and 
voices,  altos  and  baritones  and  trebles,  "  Ave, 
Ave,  Ave  Maria,"  robbed,  by  the  very  depths  of 
its  sincerity,  of  any  semblance  of  discord.  For 
fully  an  hour  we  watched  it — the  solemn  passing 
of  these  earnest,  candle-lit  faces ;  and  then, 
moving  down  the  broad  terrace  above  the  square, 
we  met  again  the  leaders  of  the  procession  as 
they  drew  up  below  the  steps.  Presently  they  had 
all  gathered  there,  thousands  strong ;  whereupon, 
led  by  a  priest  from  the  open  door  of  the  church, 
they  recited  in  one  voice  the  great  credo  of  their 
faith.  Catholic  or  not,  materialist,  or  veriest 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  149 

atheist,  it  would  have  been  impossible,  I  think, 
to  listen  unmoved  to  the  deep-chested  volume 
of  sound  that  now  rose  up  before  us — superstitious 
if  you  will,  but  with  a  superstition  that  had 
laid  its  fibres  into  humanity's  deepest  being. 
And  perhaps,  after  all,  it  was  this  strong, 
vibrating  declaration  of  belief,  purged,  if  not 
completely,  yet  to  a  very  great  extent,  of  such 
hysterical  elements  as  had  been  obvious  in 
the  afternoon,  that  swept  us  up  to  the  topmost 
pinnacle  of  the  day's  experiences.  In  the  eyes 
of  my  young  priest,  at  any  rate,  I  could  read 
that  this  was  so.  For  him,  as  I  could  see,  this 
was  at  once  the  bugle-note  of  the  undefeatable 
hosts  of  God,  and  the  herald  of  the  great  kingdom 
that  was  to  come.  It  was  the  day's  last  word  to 
him ;  and  it  rang  gloriously  with  victory. 

But  for  us  there  was  another.  For  returning 
presently  in  a  darkness  that  seemed  doubly  deep 
after  the  sudden  extinguishing  of  all  these  lamps 
and  candles,  we  came  by  accident  upon  a  lover 
and  his  sweetheart.  His  arm  was  about  her  waist, 
and  as  we  passed  he  was  kissing  her  under  the 
shadow  of  a  doorway — a  common  enough  spec- 
tacle, yet  one  that  came  upon  us  now  with  a 
shock  that  was  almost  startling.  It  served,  at  any 
rate,  to  demonstrate  how  far,  in  twenty-four 


150         *fbe  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

hours,  we  had  drifted  from  the  normal — and  to 
remind  me,  with  an  odd  and  almost  unbelievable 
emphasis,  that  in  less  than  three  days'  time  I 
shall  be  walking  through  Kensington  Gardens. 
Yr.  affect,  brother, 

PETER. 


XVIII 

To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S.,  Applebrook,  Devon, 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

June  25,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  BOB, 

I  have  had  a  talk  with  Arthur,  as  you 
suggested,  about  his  new  appointment,  and  I 
think,  on  the  whole,  that  he  would  be  well  advised 
to  take  it.  As  he  said  to  me,  poor  boy,  he  has 
had  just  lately  to  readjust  his  future  a  bit,  and 
the  practice  that  he  had  thought  of  buying  has 
ceased  to  have  much  attraction  for  him.  And  I 
needn't  tell  you  again  how  very  sorry  I  am  that 
Molly,  and  perhaps  to  a  lesser  degree  both  Esther 
and  myself,  have  been  responsible  for  this. 
For  you  know  quite  well  that  there  is  nobody 
whom  we  would  more  gladly  have  welcomed  as  an 
extra  son  ;  and  until  quite  lately  we  both  fully 
believed — although  we  had  never  of  course 
actually  ascertained  this — that  Molly  returned 
his  feelings.  Alas,  however,  for  the  best-laid 
plans — for  since  we  discussed  the  matter  at 
Applebrook,  I  have  become  almost  certain  that 
although  her  answer  would  be  "  yes "  on  every 


152         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

other  ground  but  this,  on  this  particular  one 
she  will  never,  I'm  afraid,  be  able  to  meet  him 
with  open  arms.  The  event  may  contradict  me, 
but  I  think  not.  The  divine  spark  has  not  yet 
touched  her  heart.  And  I  know  you  are  with  me 
in  believing  that  she  would  be  wrong,  with  all 
her  youth  in  front  of  her,  not  to  wait  for  it  a 
little  longer.  And  so  Arthur,  being  robbed 
(but  only  for  a  time,  I  hope)  of  what  he  tells 
me  sorrowfully  was  his  raison  d'etre,  has  decided 
to  postpone  his  debut  as  a  general  practitioner 
— yet  not  without,  unless  I  am  very  greatly 
mistaken,  a  certain  secret  atom  of  relief.  For  his 
real  inclinations,  I  am  sure,  still  centre  in  the 
laboratory  and  the  microscope  ;  and  it  was  chiefly 
for  financial  reasons  that  he  had  abandoned  any 
ideas  of  further  dallying  with  them.  He  wanted  to 
"  do  Molly,"  as  he  confided  to  me,  "  as  well  as  he 
could  "  ;  and  that  would  have  been  impossible, 
he  was  afraid,  as  a  bacteriologist  or  pathologist. 
And  there,  from  a  strictly  monetary  standpoint, 
he  was  perhaps  in  the  right.  For  though,  as  a 
profession  (and  through  us,  the  great  public),  we 
must  needs  lean  each  year  more  heavily  upon 
these  skilled  workers  at  our  right  hand,  yet 
at  present  we  are  all  very  reluctant  to  give 
them  their  full  dues  either  in  professional  iclat 


To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S.         153 

or  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence.  All  the  same, 
their  day  is  coming,  if  perhaps  a  little  slowly ; 
so  that  maybe,  after  all,  Miss  Molly's  unin- 
tentional cruelty  may  prove  to  be  an  angel  in 
mufti.  And  now  that  he  is  in  no  immediate 
need  of  earning  more  money  than  can  com- 
fortably support  himself,  I  think  that  this  new 
appointment,  as  assistant  in  the  inoculation 
department,  is  just  the  job  for  him.  It  will 
mean  of  course  two  years  of  life ;  but  he  has 
already  been  a  house-surgeon  and  a  house- 
physician,  and  in  any  case  a  two  years'  training 
in  the  exactest  of  all  scientific  technique  will 
not  be  a  waste  of  time  whatever  his  ultimate 
occupation  is  destined  to  be. 

Moreover  (though  it  is  seldom  wise  to  prophesy) 
I  am  becoming  pretty  thoroughly  convinced 
that  the  future  of  medicine  lies  more  wholly 
in  the  hands  of  the  vaccino-therapists  than  any  of 
us  are  as  yet  quite  able  to  realise.  For  when  one 
comes  to  think  of  it,  although  surgery,  during 
the  last  fifty  years,  has  been  advancing  by  leaps 
and  bounds,  medicine  has  been  standing  very 
still  indeed.  Where  it  has  moved  at  all  it  has  been 
chiefly  on  the  lines  of  improving  its  methods  of 
diagnosis,  while  as  regards  treatment  it  has 
remained  very  nearly  as  empirical  as  it  was  a 


154         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

century  ago.  Perhaps  this  is  rather  a  hard  saying, 
but  in  the  main  I  am  quite  sure  that  it  is  a  true 
one.  And  I  think  its  restoration  to  lively  and 
effective  growth  will  be  more  dependent  upon  the 
methods,  so  sound  in  their  conception  and  so 
brilliant  in  their  performance,  of  Sir  Almroth 
Wright  and  his  fellow-workers,  at  home  and 
abroad,  than  upon  any  other  factor  now  making 
for  medical  progress.  As  a  school  they  are  no 
doubt  destined  to  confront  a  good  many  reverses. 
And  they  will  presently  be  forced,  I  suspect,  to 
re-state  a  certain  number  of  their  present  beliefs. 
But  their  guiding  principle  is  so  essentially  sane, 
so  really  scientific,  in  the  true  sense  of  an  abused 
adjective,  that  I  cannot  think  your  boy  will  go 
far  wrong  in  perfecting  himself  in  their  methods, 
and  even  perhaps  deciding  later  to  specialise 
altogether  in  this  particular  branch  of  medicine. 

To  determine  by  culture  the  precise  organism 
that  is  causing  a  patient's  malady  (and  how  few 
are  the  diseases  left  to  us  that  may  be  definitely 
classed  as  non-microbic)  ;  to  learn  by  an  examina- 
tion of  his  blood-cells  the  exact  condition  of  his 
resisting  powers ;  and  to  increase  these  by  care- 
fully graduated  doses  of  his  own  or  similar 
bacteria  until  his  newly  stimulated  anti-bodies 
have  been  so  increased  and  fortified  as  to  be  able 


To  Robert  Lynn,  M.R.C.S.         155 

to  win  their  own  battle — it  is  a  general  method  of 
treatment  that  seems  to  me  to  hold  more  palpably 
the  key  to  future  victory  than  any  other.  There's 
an  infinity  yet  to  be  learned  about  it,  of  course. 
The  mysteries  of  the  anti-body  have  been 
scarcely  fringed.  And  the  technique  is  still  so 
difficult  that  none  but  a  highly  trained  man  can 
be  trusted  with  it.  But  if  anybody  is  to  win  an 
ultimate  triumph  over  incidental  disease  it  is 
that  trained  man  who  is  going  to  do  it.  And  the 
sooner  we  consulting  physicians  learn  rather  to 
count  him  as  a  brother  than  a  mere  laboratory 
assistant,  the  better  will  it  be  for  the  march  of 
light  and  healing.  Amen.  This  little  peroration 
was  put  into  my  head  by  a  passage  in  an  address 
that  I  heard  delivered  the  other  day  at  an  evening 
lecture  to  post-graduates. 

"  Gentlemen,"  said  the  lecturer — a  well-known 
provincial  consultant,  "  I  should  like  the  day 
to  dawn  when  I  could  be  met  at  the  door 
of  my  hospital  by  a  trained  chemist,  a  trained 
bacteriologist,  a  trained  pathologist,  so  that  when 
I  came  to  some  complicated  case  I  could  say, 
*  Chemist,  a  part  of  this  problem  is  yours,  take 
it  and  work  it  out.  Bacteriologist,  perform  your 
share  in  elucidating  this  difficulty.  Pathologist, 
advance,  and  do  likewise.'  " 


156         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

There  was  a  little  applause  ;  and  after  all,  he 
had  got,  I  suppose,  some  glimmering  of  what 
the  new  medicine  is  to  be.  Only  he,  the  lecturer, 
was  still,  do  you  see,  to  be  the  deus  ex  machina. 
He  was  a  genial  old  gentleman  and  quite  without 
conceit,  and  was  merely  taking,  as  we  all  do, 
I'm  afraid,  the  predominant  position  of  the 
consulting  physician  as  fixed  for  eternity.  Whereas 
instead  it  is  quite  healthily  rocking,  I  fancy,  on 
waters  that  are  ceasing  to  be  stagnant. 

Yours  ever, 

P.  H. 


XIX 

To  Hugh  Pontrex,  Hotel  Montana,  Biarritz. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

July  16,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  HUGH, 

So  the  pendulum  of  our  frailty  swings. 
The  warm  airs  of  July  have  surrounded  you 
with  well-being  in  your  Atlantic  quarters,  and  a 
confounded  carbuncle  under  my  left  shoulder 
has  been  painting  my  world  quite  black  for  at 
least  four  days,  and  grey  for  the  inside  of  a  week. 
It's  the  penalty,  I  suppose,  of  being  rarely  laid 
aside  by  sickness,  that  when  some  trivial  mis- 
fortune does  make  its  appearance,  one  exaggerates 
its  proportion  in  the  general  scheme  of  things 
to  a  quite  unmerited  degree — and  especially,  I 
think,  if  one  happens  to  be  a  doctor.  "  Physician, 
heal  thyself,"  the  mockers  say.  But  he  should 
never  attempt  to.  He  knows  too  much  about 
the  various  possibilities,  the  remoter  significances 
of  each  one  of  his  little  troubles,  to  be  a  sufficiently 
clear- minded  judge.  And  he  is  far  better  advised 
when  he  resigns  his  body  in  toto  to  the  care  of 


158         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

some  outside  mind,  and  confines  his  own  mental 
powers  to  the  fortification  of  his  private  phil- 
osophy. 

Pain,  sleeplessness,  and  that  peculiar  sense  of 
being  disowned  by  one's  own  body  that  a  high 
temperature  always  seems  to  induce — I  suppose 
if  all  the  comfortable  words  that  have  been 
uttered  in  their  explanation  were  to  be  gathered 
up  into  a  book  the  whole  world  would  not  be 
great  enough  to  contain  it.  We  were  told  not  so 
desperately  long  ago  that  they  represented  the 
direct  tenancy  of  the  evil  one  or  some  of  his 
dependents.  Then  a  more  enlightened  but  still 
stern  theology  informed  us  that  they  represented 
the  well-deserved  judgments  of  God  ;  until  a 
later  and  more  generous  interpretation  has 
inclined  rather  to  believe  in  them  as  evidences, 
a  little  puzzlingly  disguised,  of  a  chastening  yet 
still  indubitable  Love. 

But,  alas,  it  is  so  easy,  even  in  the  full  comfort 
of  bodily  health,  to  perceive  the  bottomless  gaps 
in  these  and  all  other  arguments  about  the 
great  problem  of  pain,  that  in  the  actual  enduring 
of  it  there  seems,  after  all,  very  little  to  be  done 
but  to  lie  low,  and  bear  it  humbly — as  many  a 
better  fellow  and  weaker  woman  have  borne 
worse  things  before  us  since  the  foreconsciousness 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  159 

of  death  became  the  price  of  the  first  man's  soul. 
And  yet  I  believe  quite  orthodoxly  that  these 
unattractive  episodes  in  one's  life — even  car- 
buncles— do  really  contain  some  sort  of  a  message 
to  one's  intelligence,  apart  from  the  patent  one 
that  somewhere  or  other  one  has  blundered 
against  a  natural  law,  and  paid  the  necessary 
penalty. 

For  there  comes  a  period  in  most  illnesses,  I 
think,  sometimes  during  a  temporary  respite, 
more  often  perhaps  at  the  first  dawn  of  con- 
valescence, when  one  becomes  extraordinarily 
conscious,  yet  without  discomfort,  of  the  almost 
trivial  delicacy  of  one's  surrounding  tissue.  It 
is  generally,  I  suppose,  a  moment  of  exhaustion, 
both  mental  and  physical,  either  upon  the  bugle 
of  a  victory  or  a  truce.  But  it  is  a  moment  when 
one's  spiritual  aesthesis,  as  it  were,  is  peculiarly 
at  liberty.  Very  soon,  in  a  minute  or  two  even, 
Nature  will  begin  her  work  of  restoration — 
none  more  willing  than  she,  given  a  very  little 
patience  and  half  a  straw  to  make  her  bricks  with. 
But  now  she  is  standing  by  for  a  moment,  trowel 
in  hand,  and  the  outer  wind  is  breathing  through 
the  gap.  And  it's  then,  I  think,  if  you'll  only 
listen  carefully  enough,  that  you  can  sometimes 
hear  it  whispering. 


1 60         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

"  Presently,"  you  can  hear  it  say,  "  this  little 
house  of  yours  will  be  mended,  and  the  more 
easily  maybe,  because  its  walls  are  so  thin.  But 
don't — don't  forget  too  quickly  that  it  is  but  a 
house  after  all." 

Yet  I  suppose  we  do  forget  it,  most  of  us,  and 
probably  quite  healthily,  when  once  the  dwelling- 
place  is  bricked  up  again,  and  the  new  paint  is  on, 
and  it  stands  foursquare  to  the  winds  that  may 
not  enter  now.  And  yet  again,  if  the  message 
has  once  been  heard,  or  twice,  or  thrice,  as 
circumstances  have  it,  I  don't  believe  that  it  is 
ever  entirely  lost.  And  there,  perhaps,  may  even 
lie  the  key  to  all  the  mystery ;  so  that  when  the 
last  storm  blows,  and  Nature  must  shake  her 
head,  and  let  the  frail  house  fall,  its  tenant 
may  not  go  out  altogether  unprepared. 

I  felt  all  this  very  strongly  some  ten  days  ago, 
having  made  or  reviewed  my  will  about  twenty- 
seven  times,  resigned  myself  to  the  administration 
of  gas  and  the  skilful  weapons  of  old  Sir  Jeremy 
across  the  way,  and  awakened  next  morning  to  a 
normal  temperature  and  a  comparatively  com- 
fortable back.  But  a  week's  high  feeding,  and 
three  days  with  Esther  at  Eastbourne,  in  the 
occasional  brisk  and  simple  company  of  Claire 
and  her  pals,  have  been  steadily  blunting  my 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  161 

higher  susceptibilities.  So  that's  why  I've  been 
setting  them  on  record  with  so  much  circum- 
stantial detail — a  great  deal  less  for  your  satis- 
faction than  my  own. 

We  had  resolved  to  take  Miss  Claire  by  surprise, 
and,  calling  at  the  school,  found,  as  a  consequence, 
that  she  was  out.  She  had  probably  gone 
Pevensey  way,  thought  the  maid,  with  some  of 
the  older  young  ladies  and  one  of  the  governesses. 
And  it  was  out  Pevensey  way  that  we  presently 
recognised  upon  the  beach,  among  a  heterogene- 
ous collection  of  empty  shoes  and  stockings, 
some  big-brimmed  straw  hats  with  the  school 
ribbon  upon  them.  Their  owners  were  for  the 
most  part  thigh-deep  in  the  English  Channel  with 
their  skirts  tucked  conveniently  round  their  plump 
waists.  And  they  were  being  watched  from  the 
shore  by  a  very  pleasant  young  lady,  who  looked 
rather  wistfully  as  if  she  would  like  to  be  out 
there  too.  Yes,  she  told  us,  Claire  was  in  the 
water  with  the  others,  probably  among  the 
deeper  ones  who  were  getting  their  knickers  wet. 
Surveying  the  melee  with  an  expression  of  polite 
concern,  she  was  rather  afraid  that  it  would  be 
a  little  difficult  to  make  Claire  understand 
who  we  were.  But  if  we  wouldn't  mind 
waiting  for  a  minute  or  two  they  would  all 


1 62         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

be  coming  in  to  dry  their  legs  before  going 
back  to  prep. 

Presently  some  floating  atom  of  wreckage  took 
them  unanimously  eastward,  splashing  through 
the  shallows,  until  the  governess,  waving  a 
white  handkerchief,  brought  them  gingerly  ashore 
across  a  little  bank  of  rather  slippery-looking 
rock.  There  was  a  general  shaking  out  and  re- 
arranging of  tousled  manes,  yellow  and  chestnut 
and  black,  and  a  modest  dropping  of  skirts 
to  the  demurer  level  of  shining  wet  knees. 

The  little  party  drifted  slowly  towards  us, 
their  brown  feet  lingering  wholesomely  across 
the  sands. 

"  You'll  know  Claire,"  said  the  governess, 
"  by  the  bandage  round  her  instep.  I  oughtn't 
really  to  have  let  her  paddle." 

Esther's  eyes  became  a  little  anxious. 

"  But  what  has  been  the  matter  ?  "  she  asked. 

The  governess  smiled. 

"  Oh,  nothing  very  serious,"  she  said.  "  And 
I  think  you  must  ask  Claire  herself.  Tales  out 
of  school,  you  know." 

And  then  the  least  tidy,  perhaps,  of  the  damsels 
detached  herself  suddenly  from  her  comrades, 
and  came  down  upon  us  at  top  speed,  regardless 
of  pebbles. 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  163 

"  Have  you  got  me  off  prep  ?  "  she  asked 
earnestly,  after  she  had  kissed  us  and  found  her 
shoes  and  stockings.  And  having  explained  to 
her  that  we  were  going  to  take  her  out  to  tea 
for  a  pre-birthday  treat — she  was  going  to  be 
sixteen  next  week — we  inquired  about  the 
bandage.  It  was  the  result,  we  discovered,  of  an 
illegal  (and  unconfirmed)  raid  upon  a  neigh- 
bouring dormitory,  during  which,  by  a  kind  of 
Homeric  retribution,  a  stray  tin-tack  had  wounded 
her  unprotected  foot. 

"But  it's  about  well  now,  I  should  think," 
she  said,  undoing  the  bandage,  and  turning  up 
a  salmon-pink  sole  for  our  inspection.  And 
we  were  obliged  to  confess  that  it  was. 

She  rolled  up  the  bandage  into  a  little  ball, 
and  threw  it  down  the  beach. 

"  I  wish  we  could  always  go  barefoot,"  she 
sighed.  And  for  the  moment  I  felt  inclined  to 
agree  with  her.  For  the  happy  foot,  as  T.  E. 
Brown  has  said,  swings  rather  from  the  heart 
than  from  the  hip.  And  there  are  few  prettier 
things  in  nature  than  the  restless,  romping  legs 
of  the  average  healthy  little  maiden.  They  are 
her  life's  joy  made  visible ;  so  that  it  really 
seems  a  shame,  if  a  necessary  one,  to  imprison 


164         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

them  in  even  the  airiest  of  stockings  and  the  most 
hygienic  of  leather  shoes. 

Blue  gingham  petticoats, 
White  blown  aprons, 
Five  pairs  of  plump  legs 
Twinkling  down  the  hill, 
Black  imprisoned  plump  legs, 
Fretful  for  the  stream  bed, 
Tired  of  shoes  and  stockings, 
Dancing  like  a  rill, 
Dancing  down  the  hill-side, 
So  come  the  children, 
Like  a  rill  in  sunshine, 
So  dance  they, 
Seek  the  solemn  waters, 
Marching  to  the  ocean, 
Set  the  solemn  waters 
Laughing  at  their  play. 
So  into  my  heart  come, 
Silver  it  with  laughter, 
Lest  among  the  shadows 
Lost  should  be  its  way, 
So  into  my  heart  come 
Rosamund  and  Daphne, 
Marian  and  Rosemary, 
And  little  baby  May. 

Claire  and  her  companions  had  been  paddling 
in  the  big  ocean  itself  ;  and  being  comparatively 
dignified  did  not  of  course  wear  aprons.  More- 
over, as  I  had  the  strongest  reasons  for  believing, 
they  were  at  this  moment  quite  innocent  of 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  165 

petticoats.  But  the  little  poem  comes  back 
to  me  as  I  write. 

"  And  next  week,"  she  proceeded  ruefully, 
"  I  shall  have  to  go  into  blobs  and  half-masters." 

We  stared  at  her  rather  blankly. 

"  All  the  girls  do,  you  know,"  she  added, 
"  when  they  turn  sixteen." 

"  But  blobs "  I  began. 

"  And  half-masters  ?  "  puzzled  Esther. 

"  When  your  hair's  neither  up  nor  down," 
Claire  explained,  "  with  a  big  fat  bow  on  it. 
And  when  you  have  to  wear  skirts  a  foot  below 
your  knees." 

She  rolled  over,  and  struck  her  toes  into  the 
sand. 

"  It's  to  show,"  she  finished  pathetically, 
"  that  you're  too  grown  up  to  be  spanked  and 
not  old  enough  to  have  visiting  cards." 

Which  seems  to  suggest  that  even  sixteen  may 
have  its  tragedies,  though  its  capacity  for  ices 
remains  happily  unimpaired.  Or  would  you  call 
them  growing  pains  ?  And  are  all  pains  growing 

pains  \ 

Ever  yrs., 

P.  H. 


XX 

To  Horace  Harding,  cjo  Major  Alec  Cameron, 
Glen  Bruisk,  Sutherland,  N.B. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

August  17,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  HORACE, 

So  you  have  yielded  at  last.  Your  fine 
contempt  for  the  gentlest  art  has  begun  to 
dissolve.  And  being  on  the  very  brink  of  one 
of  the  snuggest  of  sea- trout  lochs  you  think  that 
you  must  really  have  a  cast  or  two  upon  its 
waters.  There  are  people  who  will  tell  you,  of 
course,  that  it's  a  blind  man's  game,  or  very  nearly 
so,  this  loch  trout  fishing.  But  let  the  blue  waters 
— crinkled,  if  fortune  smiles,  with  the  daintiest 
of  ripples — be  their  immediate  and  sufficient  re- 
futation. And  some  day  they  may  behold  you 
casting  one  of  Mrs.  Richardson's  artfullest  duns 
over  those  senior  wranglers  among  trout  that 
lurk  in  the  disillusioned  depths  of  the  Itchen. 

At  the  same  time  I  am  not  forwarding  you  an 
outfit  for  your  birthday  present,  as  you  so 
delicately  suggest,  firstly  because  you  tell  me 

1 66 


'To  Horace  Harding  167 

that  Major  Cameron  can  easily  fix  you  up  with 
all  that  is  necessary ;  but  principally  because  I  am 
not  quite  comfortable  in  my  mind  as  to  your  real 
motive  for  caressing  the  surface  of  Loch  Bruisk. 
I  should  like  to  be  just  a  little  surer  that  it  is  a 
genuine  regard  for  salmo  trutta  rather  than  a 
merely  altruistic  (though  very  praiseworthy) 
desire  to  be  properly  companionable  to  Miss 
Graham,  who  is,  as  you  tell  me,  so  awfully  keen 
about  it. 

It  is  of  course  a  very  strong  point  in  her  favour, 
and  I  remember  her  brother  quite  well.  He 
plays  half  for  Richmond,  I  think,  and  you  intro- 
duced us  to  one  another  at  Queen's.  And  his 
sister — I  don't  remember  that  you  have  men- 
tioned her  to  me  before — may  of  course  be  the 
means  to  an  end — an  instrument  chosen  by  a 
merciful  Providence  whereby  a  new  channel  of 
enjoyment  is  about  to  be  revealed  to  you.  But 
on  the  other  hand,  I  can't  help  feeling  that  with 
your  duty  done,  cheerfully  and  bravely,  as  I 
have  no  doubt  will  be  the  case — and  Miss  Graham 
away — the  yearning  to  catch  trout  may  con- 
ceivably leave  you.  So  I  am  sending  you  instead 
my  very  best  wishes  for  the  happiest  of  birth- 
days, and  a  hope  that  you  have  many  others  yet 
in  store  for  you. 


1 68         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

I  am  glad  that  you  have  determined  to  go  up 
for  your  second  medical  some  time  next  year, 
and  note  that  you  have  taken  away  volumes  of 
anatomy  and  physiology  in  your  trunk.  If  you 
will  accept  my  paternal  advice,  however,  you  will 
leave  them  there  until  you  have  decided  that 
your  health  is  sufficiently  recuperated  to  return 
either  to  Cambridge  or  Harley  Street.  I  don't 
want  you  to  curtail  your  holidays.  I  have  far 
too  much  respect  both  for  holidays  in  general 
and  yourself  in  particular.  For  it's  one  of  the 
most  pathetic  features  about  the  genuine  old 
codger  (and  one  of  his  surest  signs  too)  that  his 
periods  of  recreation  tend  to  become  progressively 
shorter — and  not  always  by  force  of  circumstances. 
They  may  actually  begin  to  bore  him.  He  may 
even  have  to  make  an  effort  of  will  to  prolong 
them  for  his  ultimate  good — to  school  himself 
into  regarding  them  as  cures.  Thus,  while  at 
twenty-two  a  summer  vacation  of  less  than  two 
months  is  too  monstrous  to  be  seriously  con- 
sidered, at  forty-two  one  becomes  grateful  for  a 
fortnight,  could  do  with  three  weeks,  but  is  apt 
to  find  a  month  just  a  trifle  too  long.  Whereas 

at  fifty-two So  don't  curtail  them.     And 

yet  better  is  it  to  curtail  them  than  to  pollute. 
And  unless  you  particularly  need  them  for  pre- 


T'o  Horace  Harding  169 

serving  specimens  of  the  local  flora  or  maintaining 
the  creases  upon  your  Sunday  trousers,  you  should 
never,  never,  never  pack  technical  books  in  a 
holiday  trunk.  It  is  to  put  poison — or  at  any  rate 
water — into  the  wine  that  you  are  to  pour  out 
before  the  gods  of  mountain  and  moor  and  loch. 
And  though  they  are  generous  they  are  proud. 
And  they  will  surely  make  you  repent  it — not 
merely  because  it  is  tactless,  as  though  you  should 
make  Miss  Dolly — I  think  that  was  her  name  ? — 
the  staple  article  of  your  conversations  with  Miss 
Graham  ;  and  not  merely  because  it  shows  your 
ignorance,  as  though  you  should  munch  ginger- 
nuts  with  that  fine  old  port  which  your  uncle  has 
dug  up  for  your  especial  benefit ;  but  because — • 
far  worse — it  is  an  evidence  of  double-dealing. 
And  no  god,  not  even  the  presiding  deity  of  the 
tiniest  mountain  ash,  is  going  to  stand  that.  If 
you  read  your  Bible,  as  I  hope  you  do,  you  will 
have  been  warned  concerning  this  simultaneous 
worship  of  two  contrary  masters,  and  the  doom 
that  must  certainly  befall  it.  And  that's  why  no 
really  wise  schoolmaster  ever  sets  his  pupils  a 
holiday  task,  though  there  are  still,  I'm  afraid,  a 
few  foolish  ones  left.  I  hardly  like  to  think  that 
mine  can  have  been  among  them  ;  and  yet  there's 
no  doubt  that  "Marmion,"  the  "Lady  of  the 


170          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

Lake,"  the  "Cloister  and  the  Hearth,"  and 
several  other  peaks  upon  the  literary  landscape 
remain  clouded  to  me  for  ever. 

You  would  have  thought  this  a  sufficiently 
clear  lesson,  perhaps,  upon  the  point  that  I  am 
pressing  into  you.  But  it  wasn't.  And  I  remem- 
ber consecrating  a  golden  September  in  Fife  to 
the  mastery  of  my  materia  medica.  There's  a 
moor,  for  instance,  somewhere  between  Dunferm- 
line  and  Rumbling  Bridge  that  will  eternally  be 
associated  in  my  mind  with  the  preparations  of 
opium.  I  can  recall  in  all  its  hideous  detail  some 
such  afternoon's  tramp  as  this  : — 

"  By  George,  that's  a  fine  piece  of  colouring, 
the  sunlight  on  that  dying  heather  over  there, 
Tinct :  Camph  :  Co  :  strength  of  opium  one 
in  two  hundred  and  forty.  There  are  the  Ochils 
again,  pil :  plumbi  cum  opio,  strength  of  opium 

one  in  eight Damn,  I  forgot  to  look  for  that 

big  trout  when  I  crossed  the  burn  just  now.  Ex- 
tractum  opii,  strength  of  opium  two  in  one  "  (it 
sounds  improbable — even  theological — but  if  you 
look  it  up  you  will  discover  it  to  be  correct,  and 
I  have  never  found  the  knowledge  in  the  least 
important).  And,  as  a  result,  that  particular 
moor  will  always  whisper  to  me  unhealthily  of 
morphia,  while  the  preparations  of  opium  had 


T'o  Horace  Harding 


to  be  learned  all  over  again  in  something  less  than 
six  weeks'  time. 

And  you  will  generally  find  it  to  be  the  case,  I 
think,  that  the  work  which  has  desecrated  the 
holiday  can  seldom  stand  either  the  test  of  an 
examination  or  the  more  valuable  one  of  practical 
appliance.  For  it's  the  term's  work,  the  good, 
solid,  everyday's  grind  in  the  dissecting-room  or 
the  physiological  theatre,  and  later  in  the  wards 
and  the  out-patient  department,  that  is  the  bone 
and  marrow  of  your  pre-graduate  education. 
Without  it  no  amount  of  feverish  cramming  will 
ever  make  you  efficient,  though  it  may  occasionally 
perhaps  save  you  from  being  deservedly  ploughed. 
And  with  it  no  cramming  should  be  necessary  — 
or  at  most  a  very  little.  For  there  are  still  a  few 
subjects,  alas,  demanded  by  examining  boards  that 
can  be  learned,  I  suppose,  in  no  other  way  —  such 
as  the  preparations  of  opium  before  mentioned, 
with  their  respective  strengths  and  all  that  apper- 
tains unto  them,  and  the  ingredients  of  various 
obscure  powders  that  you  will  never  hear  about 
again.  In  after  life  you  will  always  refer  to  your 
pharmacopeia  if  you  want  information  upon  these 
subjects,  and  no  normal  mind  has  either  the 
capacity  or  the  desire  to  retain  their  details  for 


\J2         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

so  long  as  twenty-four  hours  after  they  have  been 
required  in  the  examination-room. 

But  as  a  general  rule,  and  one  that  is  happily 
gaining  ground  every  year,  you  will  find  that 
your  examiners  will  far  prefer  to  discover  in  you 
the  evidences  of  a  functionally  active,  if  some- 
what lightly  stored,  mind  than  a  kind  of  fate  de 
foie  gras,  fattened  up  for  the  occasion,  but  too 
inert,  as  a  result,  to  leave  him  quite  happy  about 
its  future.  And  that's  why  it's  always  a  good 
thing  to  take  life  easily  during  the  last  week  before 
your  papers  have  to  be  written.  Go  abroad,  mix 
with  normal  men  and  women,  to  whom  examina- 
tions are  just  episodes  in  the  lives  of  other  people, 
fearsome  but  remote.  And  remind  yourself  in 
their  unruffled  company  that,  after  all,  they  are 
merely  episodes.  You  won't  forget  anything  really 
important  in  that  time.  If  you  do,  you  can  never 
properly  have  known  it.  While  as  for  the  trim- 
mings, you  will  be  more  than  compensated  for 
the  shedding  of  a  few  of  these  by  the  sanity  and 
freshness  with  which  your  brain  will  come  to  its 
ordeal — as  an  example  of  the  reverse  of  which 
there  occurs  to  me  the  vision  of  a  pallid  young 
man  who  addressed  me  about  six  weeks  ago  in 
the  hospital  lobby.  He  was  very  much  fright- 


To  Horace  Harding  173 

ened.  I  didn't  know  who  he  was.  Indeed  I 
don't  think  that  I  had  ever  seen  him  before.  And 
the  remnants  of  a  natural  modesty  were  evi- 
dently struggling  to  hold  him  back.  But  Circum- 
stance, and  the  awful  fact  that  in  less  than  an 
hour's  time  he  was  due  for  a  viva  upon  the 
Thames  Embankment,  forced  him  trembling  to- 
wards me.  He  wiped  his  forehead — I  was  the 
only  likely  subject  within  range  at  the  moment, 
and  his  train  was  to  leave  in  exactly  seven  and  a 
half  minutes. 

"  I  can  remember  the  hooklets,"  he  gasped, 
"  but  would  you  mind  telling  me,  sir,  which  of 
the  tapeworms  it  is  that  has  four  suckers  ?  " 

Poor  boy — I  could  see  that  his  whole  future 
was  pivoting  miserably  upon  those  forgotten 
suckers ;  and,  by  an  excessively  fortunate  acci- 
dent, I  happened  to  have  some  notes  for  a  lecture 
upon  the  subject  in  one  of  my  pockets. 

"  If  you'll  wait  a  moment,"  I  told  him  honestly, 
"  I  think  that  I  can  let  you  know.  But  I  really 
couldn't  tell  you  offhand." 

He  looked  at  me  anxiously,  and  I  could  see  my 
reputation  tottering  in  his  eyes  as  I  searched 
about  for  my  pocket-book. 

"  Nor  could  your  examiners,  you  know,"  I 
assured  him,  "  unless  they  had  just  primed  them- 


1 74         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

selves  beforehand,  or  carried  notes  upon  their 
cuffs — which  they  probably  do." 

His  brow  cleared  amazingly  at  this,  and  I  could 
see  that  the  relative  importance  of  knowing, 
without  reference,  the  precise  number  of  a  tape- 
worm's suckers  was  beginning  to  define  itself  a 
little  more  clearly  to  his  distressed  understanding. 
So  I  read  out  my  notes  to  him,  and  he  dashed 
upon  his  way,  relieved  if  not  rejoicing.  But  you 
mustn't  ever  become  like  that,  you  know,  although 
it's  not  so  difficult  to  do  so  as  you  may  think. 

And  lastly,  if  there  should  be  a  Miss  Graham — 
I  speak  in  the  abstract,  of  course,  and  very,  very 
tentatively — she  must  be  allowed  to  share  none 
of  the  homage  that  every  respectable  examination 
insists  upon  monopolising.  She  may  still  be  the 
goddess  in  your  car.  For  on  the  whole  I  think 
that  goddesses  (of  the  right  sort)  make  for  careful 
driving.  But  at  present  your  eyes  must  be  chiefly 
upon  the  reins.  You  must  forgive  me  for  touch- 
ing upon  a  topic  that  you  will  probably  find 
extremely  irrelevant,  but  there  are  certain  things 
in  a  Highland  country  house  that  are  curiously 
apt  to  wander  a  little  from  their  true  perspective. 
I  ought  to  have  mentioned,  by  the  way,  that 
Churchills  are  sending  you  a  gun,  which  I  hope 
may  arrive  safely  with  this  letter.  For  though  I 


To  Horace  Harding  175 

am  quite  open  to  conviction  about  the  fishing,  I 
feel  rather  more  certain  about  the  shooting.  It 
was  pre-Grahamite,  you  see — you  haven't  told 
me  her  Christian  name — pre-Dollyite,  pre-Beryl- 
ite  —  and  even,  if  I  remember  rightly,  pre- 
Looite  ;  so  that  I  think  it  may  safely  be  accepted 
as  being  integral  and  not  merely  adventitious. 
Anyway,  there's  the  gun,  and  I  hope  that  you'll 
kill  many  grouse  with  it  in  spite  of  your  sister 
Molly  and  her  humanitarian  comrades.  For 
grouse,  like  men,  must  die  on  a  day,  and  better 
the  quick  shot  in  mid-flight  than  to  crawl  away, 
and  to  perish  slowly  in  the  corner  as  most  of  us, 
alas,  will  probably  have  to  do  when  our  sunset 
days  come  round. 

I  expect  you  will  already  have  had  letters  from 
mother  and  Molly,  if  not  from  Tom  and  Claire, 
who  are  staying  with  Lady  Wroxton  at  Stoke, 
and  defying  the  Thames  Conservancy  in  the 
matter  of  mixed  bathing  during  most  of  the  for- 
bidden hours.  You  heard,  no  doubt,  or  saw  in 
the  papers,  that  Rupert  Morris  has  had  a  K  added 
to  his  C.B. ;  which  means,  I  suppose,  that  his 
little  scrap  on  the  frontier  was  more  important 
than  he  led  us  to  suppose.  In  any  case,  nobody, 
I  should  think,  has  deserved  his  title  more,  and 
quite  certainly  no  one  will  value  it  less.  He  is 


176         *The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

expected  home,  I  believe,  about  the  end  of 
September,  and  you  will  probably  meet  him  at 
Stoke,  where  Molly  (having  squared  her  con- 
science) is  presently  to  assist  in  the  extra  house- 
keeping demanded  by  the  partridges  and  phea- 
sants. With  much  love, 

Yr.  affect,  father, 

P.  H. 


XXI 

To  Miss  Josephine  Summers,  The  Cottage, 
Potham,  Beds. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

August  25,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  AUNT  JOSEPHINE, 

I  have,  of  course,  frequently  seen  many  of 
the  pictures  that  you  mention,  and  have  also 
read  some  of  the  stories  of  which,  as  you  say,  each 
illustration  professes  to  tell  one.  I  don't  think 
however  that  I  have  seen  the  particular  one 
of  the  signalman  which  you  enclose ;  and  it 
certainly  seems  a  coincidence  that  he  should  be 
pressing  his  left  hand  so  vehemently  upon  the 
precise  spot  at  which  your  cook  also  is  so  apt  to 
suffer  pain.  And  it  is  odd  too  that,  like  her,  he 
would  appear  to  be  so  thoroughly  respectable 
that  their  common  affliction  becomes  a  little 
difficult  to  understand.  It  is  not,  as  you  say, 
as  if  either  of  them  gave  one  the  least  impression 
of  being  in  any  degree  loose  or  rackety.  At  the 
same  time,  from  a  close  examination  of  the 
signalman's  anatomy,  I  don't  think  that  the 

M  177 


178          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

organs  so  frequently  mentioned  in  his  very 
eloquent  account  of  himself  are  those  most  likely 
to  be  affected.  And  perhaps  your  cook  may 
also  be  happily  under  a  similar  misapprehension. 
And  that  is  why,  before  taking  the  pills  that 
have  been  so  markedly  blessed  to  the  signalman, 
I  would  suggest  the  outward  application  of  a 
little  friction  with  the  open  palm  of  someone 
else's  hand  in  which  have  been  previously  placed 
a  few  drops  of  turpentine.  It  will  be  so  far  less 
expensive,  you  see ;  and,  even  if  not  finally 
successful,  will  at  any  rate  do  no  harm.  But 
I  have  great  hopes. 

Your  affect,  nephew, 

PETER  HARDING. 


XXII 

To  Reginald  Pole,  S.T.  Nautilus,  Harwich. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

August  30,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  REGGIE, 

When  one  of  your  youngest  journalists 
from  Franciscan  House  called  upon  me  last  night, 
I  guessed  at  once  that  you  were  either  away 
from  home  or  that  you  had  given  the  lad  carte 
blanche  to  collect  material  for  a  "  silly  season  " 
discussion,  without  adding  an  Olympian  hint  or 
two  as  to  where  he  had  best  go  hunting. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  both  surmises  turned  out  to 
be  correct ;  and  I  even  seemed  to  detect  in  him 
a  certain  air  of  relief  as  he  admitted  the  first, 
while  he  was  still  young  enough  to  feel  rather 
important  with  regard  to  the  second.  Unhappy 
youth — how  should  he  know  that  he  had  run  into 
the  very  jaws  of  your  arch-enemy  ? 

It  was  a  college  friendship  with  Horace,  he 
informed  me,  that  was  his  excuse  for  calling 
upon  me,  although  of  course  he  knew  quite  well 
that  I  was  an  eminent  authority  on  the  subject 

179 


1 80         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

in  hand.  This  was  so  obvious  an  afterthought 
that  I  couldn't  help  asking  him  what  the  subject 
might  be.  He  told  his  lie  so  nicely,  you  see, 
and  was  so  humbly  aware  of  its  small  worth. 
He  coloured  a  little. 

"  Are  we  nervous  ?  "  he  said. 

I  pushed  over  the  tobacco- jar,  and  asked  him 
to  fill  his  pipe. 

"  I  hope  not,"  I  replied,  and  he  coloured  a  little 
more. 

"  You  don't  understand,"  he  explained.  "  That 
is  to  be  the  headline  of  the  discussion.  At  least, 
that  was  what  I'd  thought  myself.  But  some 
of  the  other  fellows  have  suggested,  '  Are  we 
more  nervous  ? '  or  '  Where  are  our  National 
Nerves  ?  '  or  '  National  Neurosis ;  are  we 
suffering  from  it  ?  ' 

I  nodded. 

"  Yours  is  the  shortest,"  I  said. 

"  Just  so,"  he  replied,  "  and,  I  think,  the  most 
arresting." 

"  And  who's  going  to  write  the  first  letter  ?  "  I 
asked. 

"  Well,"  he  stammered,  "  I  rather  expect  it 
will  be  me." 

"  And  you'll  call  yourself  '  A  London  Physician,' 
I  suppose  ?  " 


To  Reginald  Pole  1 8 1 

"  Something  like  that,"  he  confessed.  "  You 
see,  a  newspaper  discussion  like  this  is  all  right 
when  once  it's  started — that  is,  if  it's  a  live  one, 
as  Mr.  Pole  calls  it.  The  other  letters  simply 
pour  in." 

"  From  Balham  and  Holloway  and  Tottenham 
and  Ilford " 

"  Oh  yes,"  he  smiled,  "  and  from  Kensington 
and  Mayfair  as  well." 

"  You  think  that  a  good  many  of  your  readers 
will  like  to  tell  the  public  all  about  their  nerves  ?  " 

"  Thousands  of  'em,"  he  said  confidently. 

"  And  you'll  select  a  certain  number  of  letters 
from  each  district,  and  fill  up  a  couple  of  your 
daily  columns  for  nothing  ?  " 

"  That's  the  idea.  And  we  shall  give  a  lot  of 
pleasure  too." 

"  And  the  writers  and  the  writers'  friends  will 
rush  to  buy  copies,  I  suppose,  and  cut  out  their 
letters,  and  stick  them  in  albums." 

He  laughed. 

"  I  shouldn't  wonder,"  he  said.  "  Making 
personal  friends  for  the  paper — that's  what 
Mr.  Pole  calls  it.  He  says  that  nothing  pays 
better." 

"  And  presently,  perhaps,  you'll  collect  all  the 
letters,  and  put  them  in  a  little  booklet  of  which 


1 82         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

you'll  sell  large  numbers  for  sixpence  in  a  com- 
fortable dressing-gown  of  advertisements." 

"  Possibly,"  he  said,  "  if  it  goes  really  well." 

I  looked  at  him  for  a  moment,  upon  the 
threshold  of  his  life-work.  He  was  a  nice  boy, 
though  the  shades  of  Franciscan  House  were 
fast  closing  about  him. 

"  D'you  think  it's  worth  it  ?  "  I  asked  him. 

"  Why  rather,"  he  said.  "  Pays  like  any- 
thing." 

"  Forty  per  cent,  perhaps  ?  " 

"  Very  likely." 

"  The  Franciscan  heaven,"  I  admitted,  and  he 
winced  a  little.  By  which  I  knew,  of  course, 
that  he  was  as  yet  no  true  Franciscan — who 
never  winces,  and  whose  conscience,  to  use  a 
borrowed  phrase,  is  merely  his  accomplice. 

"  Do  you  object  to  forty  per  cent  ? "  he 
asked. 

"  Per  se?"  I  answered,  "  not  at  all." 

"  But  to  the  correspondence  perhaps  ?  " 

"  I'm  not  enamoured  of  the  idea,"  I  confessed. 
"  Are  you  ?  " 

He  reached  for  the  ash-tray,  and  knocked  out 
his  pipe. 

"  We  must  give  'em  what  they  want,  you 
know,"  he  said. 


To  Reginald  Pole  183 

I  bowed. 

"  The  Franciscan  creed,"  I  told  him.  "  But 
perhaps  they  don't  know  yet  that  they  do  want 
it." 

"  Then  we  must  show  'em,"  he  replied. 

"  The  Franciscan  gospel,"  I  sighed,  for,  as 
I  have  said,  he  was  a  nice  boy,  still  trailing  a  wisp 
or  two  of  glory. 

"  And  besides,"  he  went  on,  "  people  always 
like  to  talk  about  their  weak  nerves,  don't 
they  ?  " 

He  was  getting  in  under  my  guard  now  to  bleed 
me  of  copy,  so  I  stepped  aside. 

"  Play  cricket  ?  "  I  asked  him. 

"  A  bit,"  he  confessed. 

"  Ever  stopped  a  rot  ?  " 

"  Sometimes,"  he  replied  warily. 

"  How  did  you  do  it  ?  "  I  inquired. 

He  laughed  again. 

"  Now  you're  getting  at  me,  aren't  you  ?  "  he 
said. 

"  Of  course  I  am.  Haven't  you  been  trying  to 
get  at  me  ?  " 

"  Do  you  think  you're  going  to  score  ?  "  he 
asked. 

"  I  shouldn't  wonder,"  I  told  him ;  "  because 
you  didn't  encourage  those  panicky  fellow- 


1 84        The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

batsmen  of  yours  to  talk  about  their  nerves,  did 
you  ?  On  the  contrary,  you  swaggered  a  bit 
yourself,  and  told  'em  that  the  bowling  was  poor 
stuff.  You  didn't  even  tell  'em  to  forget  that 
growing  excavation  behind  their  belt-buckles. 
You  were  subtler.  You  took  it  for  granted  that 
they  hadn't  got  one.  You  surrounded  'em  with 
the  proper  atmosphere.  You  were  more  than 
half  a  nerve  specialist  already — the  better  half. 
You  infected  them  with  your  own  health. 
But  what  are  you  proposing  to  do  now  ?  " 

The  journalist  in  him  died  hard. 

"  Then  you  think  there  is  a  rot  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  I  didn't  say  so." 

He  put  his  pipe  in  his  pocket,  and  picked  up 
his  hat  and  gloves. 

"  After  all,"  he  smiled,  "  you've  only  been 
preaching  the  old  doctrine  of  responsibility, 
you  know.  And  the  modern  journalist  is  a 
detached  person."  But  I  shook  my  head. 

I  repeat  that  he  was  a  nice  boy,  and  had  borne 
my  little  pi-jaw  with  admirable  fortitude. 

"  Only  semi-detached,"  I  ventured,  "  with  a 
half-educated  brother  next  door." 

I  fancy  that  I  can  see  you  lying  snugly  aft  upon 
the  "Nautilus"  at  anchor — a  bronzing  cynic, 
smiling  gently  over  this  ingenuous  little  duel.  And 


To  Reginald  Pole  185 

perhaps  you  have  already  made  up  your  mind  to 
transfer  this  incomplete  disciple  of  yours  to  some 
other  department,  or  even  (according  to  a 
fundamental  Franciscan  tradition)  to  dispense 
with  his  services  altogether.  For  if  he  cannot 
bring  himself  to  demolish  one  prehistoric  phy- 
sician, what  can  he  do  ?  And  I  shall  be  sorry 
if  he  is  put  to  any  real  inconvenience.  But 
on  the  other  hand  I  shall  rejoice  openly  to  see 
him  save  his  soul  alive.  For  though  I  didn't 
tell  him  so,  and  though  I  am  convinced  that  at 
the  core — the  germ-plasm,  if  you  like — the  race 
is  still  happily  sound  enough,  yet  if  there  is  a 
rot,  a  temporary  epidemic  of  nervous  instability, 
it  is  largely  confined  to  those  who  draw  their 
mental  nourishment  from  Franciscan  House,  and 
whose  twitterings  you  are  now  proposing  to 
exploit. 

Autres  temps,  autres  mceurs,  for  while  there 
was  a  time  when  our  more  ignorant  forefathers 
were  wont  to  scoff  (mistakenly,  no  doubt,  but  on 
balance  with  a  tonic  effect)  at  the  possessors  of 
"  weak  nerves,"  now  that  we  have  learned  just 
enough  to  talk  about  them  in  bad  Greek  "  neuras- 
thenia "  is  an  affection  of  which  no  man  need  be 
ashamed.  "  Poor  chap,"  we  say,  and  begin  to 
wonder  if  we  are  not  sufferers  ourselves. 


1 86         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

You  will  have  observed  that  my  reference  is 
masculine,  although  the  older  historians  have 
regarded  the  complaint  as  being  chiefly  confined 
to  women.  But  you  are  not  to  deduct  from  this, 
as  I  can  see  you  trying  to  do,  that  the  neurasthenia 
of  to-day  is  therefore  a  new  variety,  whose 
exhibition  in  your  halfpenny  daily  paper  is 
justifiable  on  public  grounds.  For  if  it  attacked 
mainly  a  certain  class  of  our  great-grandmothers 
and  their  maternal  ancestors,  this  was  less,  I 
think,  on  account  of  their  sex  than  of  their 
circumstances — the  predisposing  combination  in 
some  of  them  of  slender  academic  endowment 
with  unexercised  mental  activity. 

Times  have  changed,  but  even  then  it  was  not 
the  woman  of  affairs,  whose  education,  ample 
or  the  reverse,  had  been  salted  by  the  winds  of 
action — it  was  not  the  queens  and  the  states- 
women  at  the  one  pole,  or  the  workers  in  the 
fields  at  the  other,  but  the  secluded  gentle- 
women between  them,  who  fainted  daily,  and 
agonised  over  beetles  and  mice.  Requiescant  in 
pace,  for  their  day  is  no  more,  and  their  busier 
daughters  have  no  longer  time  to  write  pathetic 
little  self -revelations  in  unventilated  boudoirs, 
or  collapse  at  a  knock  upon  the  door.  Instead, 
they  will  vault  nimbly  over  the  window-sill ; 


To  Reginald  Pole  187 

while  as  for  the  beetles,  they  will  kill  them  for 
you  mercifully,  and  explain  their  pedigree  in 
Latin. 

But  the  class  that  they  have  thus  vacated  has 
not,  alas,  been  suffered  to  die  out,  and  is  now 
perhaps  even  fuller  than  ever.  Gone,  it  is  true, 
with  the  conditions  that  produced  them,  are  the 
vaporous  women  of  Richardson  and  Fielding. 
But  here  in  their  stead,  and  in  a  very  similar  soil, 
is  the  twopenny  clerk  of  to-day.  And  it  is 
typically  in  his  Harringay  villa  that  one  must 
search  for  the  modern  neurasthenic.  A  little 
cheap  education,  a  long  period  of  physical 
security,  a  comfortable,  if  inexpensive,  assurance 
of  at  any  rate  the  more  primal  necessities,  and  the 
demand  of  ever  coalescing  industries  for  an 
innumerable  army  of  semi-automatic  dependents 
— all  these  have  been  at  work.  And  they  have 
built  up  for  us  a  hundred  airless  mental  chambers, 
whose  inhabitants,  desperately  aware  of  their 
gentility,  and  sufficiently  educated  for  a  little 
self -probing,  have  nothing  more  demanded  from 
them  than  to  copy  out  stereotyped  letters  or 
manipulate  a  Morse  key.  To  obtain  their  chance 
of  doing  these  things  they  had  to  acquire  a 
small  amount  of  knowledge — since  seldom  added 
to  ;  and  to  do  them  automatically  a  few  months 


1 88          The  Corner  of  Har ley  Street 

of  mental  apprenticeship  became  necessary.  No 
more  was  asked  of  them.  And  after  a  little  while, 
and  in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  they  have 
ceased  to  ask  more  of  themselves.  And  I  have 
seen  men  crying  in  my  consulting-room  over 
some  trivial,  unexpected  appeal  that  has  been  too 
much  for  their  paralysed  initiative. 

You  may  think  that  my  analogy  is  far-fetched, 
and  superficially  I'll  admit  that  it  is.  But  probe 
a  little  deeper,  and  you'll  find  how  exactly  the 
related  conditions  have  produced  corresponding 
types.  Look  at  my  sequestered  lady  busy  with 
her  eternal  crochet,  but  in  reality  not  busy  at  all. 
And  then  behold  my  little  clerk  occupied  with 
his  letters  and  his  envelope-licking,  but  with  a 
brain  as  really  unemployed  as  my  lady's.  Read 
out  to  me  the  writings  of  my  sequestered  lady 
or  the  records  of  her  conversations.  How  little 
she  had  read  or  seen  or  studied,  and  yet  with 
what  confident  persistence  she  uttered  her  super- 
latives. And  now  talk  to  my  little  clerk,  who 
likewise  has  climbed  no  mountains  of  comparison, 
and  his  tiniest  headache  is  "  shocking,"  his  least 
calamity  "  terrible."  Why,  only  this  afternoon 
I  was  asked  for  a  tonic  by  such  an  one  (your 
halfpenny  illustrated  was  peeping  out  of  his 
pocket)  on  the  ground  that  yesterday  he  had 


To  Reginald  Pole 


seen  a  small  child  cut  its  forehead,  and  held  it 
till  the  doctor  came.  Listen  to  my  sequestered 
lady,  innocence  herself,  and  her  talk,  with  titters, 
is  of  my  lord's  liaisons,  my  lady's  cure,  and  what 
the  neighbours  think.  And  listen  to  my  little 
clerk,  and  what  are  his  topics  but  these  ? 

God  forbid  that  I  should  hold  either  of  them 
up  for  ridicule  (it's  you  that  I'm  ultimately  to 
annihilate),  for  such  generalities  as  these  are 
never  more  than  half  true.  My  lady  was  only 
waiting  for  the  marching  years  to  become  a 
Florence  Nightingale  and  a  Madame  Curie. 
She  was  only  waiting  to  be  shown,  and  admitted 
into,  the  great  worlds  outside  her  boudoir  to 
prove  a  right  of  way  that  has  long  since  ceased 
to  be  questioned.  And  who  shall  say  what 
shining  destiny  awaits  my  little  clerk  ?  For  it  is 
not,  as  we  are  so  often  told,  the  mere  rush  of  our 
modern  industrialism  that  is  at  the  root  of  so 
much  neurasthenia — it  is  its  blank  automatism, 
with  its  endless  opportunities  for  self-pity.  And 
one  can  only  suppose  that  as  we  advance  in 
knowledge  much  of  this  human  drudgery  will  be 
delegated  to  other  instruments.  But  the  time 
is  not  yet,  alas,  and  meanwhile  all  that  is  best  of 
him  has  to  struggle  with  circumstances  only  too 
sorrowfully  adapted  to  morbid  mental  imaginings. 


1 90         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

"  The  result  of  all  this  free  education,"  you 
will  be  told  by  a  certain  type  of  elderly  raisonneur. 
But  of  course  he  is  wrong.  It's  not  less  education 
that  we  want,  but  more.  For  even  in  the  good 
old  days,  as  I  have  said,  it  was  not  the  Marie 
Stuarts  and  the  Queen  Elizabeths,  delivering 
their  Latin  orations  and  translating  their  "  Mirrors 
of  the  Sinful  Soul "  at  thirteen  and  fourteen  years 
old,  it  was  not  the  full-tide  women  of  the 
Renaissance,  who  were  afterwards  conspicuous 
for  nervous  debility.  And  nor  is  it  the  really 
well-educated  clerk  of  to-day.  For  while  a 
little  education  is  chiefly  dangerous  in  so  far 
as  it  increases  a  man's  self-consciousness  without 
showing  him  where  it  is  gently  to  be  laughed  at, 
a  little  more  will  generally  remedy  this  defect,  to 
the  lasting  benefit  of  his  sanity.  No,  it's  in  his 
awful  self-seriousness  that  lurks  the  subtlest 
enemy  of  the  half-educated  man.  If  you  can 
make  a  man  laugh  at  himself,  you  can  make  him 
laugh  at  his  nerves — which  is  better  than  a 
hecatomb  of  bromides. 

Well  then,  there's  my  analogy ;  and  here's 
where  it  breaks  down.  My  lady's  prison  walls 
were  concrete  as  well  as  abstract ;  my  clerk's 
are  chiefly  abstract.  She  was  in  the  world  but 
not  of  it.  He  is  both  in  it  and  of  it.  She  could 


To  Reginald  Pole  191 

scarcely  touch  upon  its  treasures  if  she  would. 
For  him  they  are  waiting — the  real  ones — if  he 
will  only  take  them.  Long  ago  we  have  recog- 
nised the  merely  physical  dangers  of  his  daily 
enforced  imprisonment.  And  we  have  framed  a 
hundred  sanitary  laws  to  provide  him  with  his 
oxygen  unsullied.  But  what  about  his  half- 
developed  mind  ?  You  will  tell  me  that  good 
lectures  are  abundant,  and  that  classics  may  be 
bought  for  a  shilling.  Yet  what  are  these,  at  the 
best,  but  occasional  winds  of  thought,  too  often 
resented  as  a  draught  ?  And  who  is  it  but  you, 
creeping  under  his  door  for  a  halfpenny,  that 
creates  his  mental  atmosphere  ?  You  may  tell  me 
that  you  only  reproduce  it,  with  its  constituents 
very  faithfully  proportioned — a  nebulous  sermon- 
ette  once  a  week,  an  inch  to  the  scientific  progress 
of  both  the  hemispheres,  and  three  columns 
to  the  personal  appearance  of  the  Camden 
murderer.  And  you  may  justify  yourself  on  the 
same  grounds  for  covering  your  nakedness,  as 
you  did  last  week  (I'm  glad  that  you  yourself 
were  away),  with  an  appeal  in  big  letters  that  he 
should  buy  your  orange-coloured  weekly,  where- 
in— with  delicious  exclusiveness — he  might  find, 
in  all  its  details,  the  life-history  of  this  same 
criminal's  flimsy  little  paramour,  written  (God 


192          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

forgive  you — and  him)  by  her  own  father ; 
and  the  nadir,  one  can  only  pray,  of  your  efforts 
for  forty  per  cent.  But  you  cannot  at  the  same 
time  lay  a  finger  on  your  paragraph  of  Health 
Hints,  and  boast  complacently  about  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Press.  Nor  do  you,  I  suppose,  with 
any  real  conviction ;  and  I  may  have  exaggerated, 
perhaps,  in  crediting  you  with  the  creation  of  any- 
body's atmosphere.  For  the  true  brain-worker 
passes  you  by,  and  the  manual  labourer  has  his 
antidote  at  hand ;  while  the  little  clerk  is  not, 
in  a  modern  and  abominable  phrase,  "  a  person 
who  matters."  But  then  he  is.  And  in  the 
battle  for  mental  vigour  that,  under  present 
conditions,  he  must  consciously  fight  or  die, 
you  might  so  easily  be  playing  the  biggest  rather 
than  the  least  worthy  part.  For  our  help  still 
cometh  from  the  hills.  And  surely  it's  of  the 
hill-top  men,  the  men  who  are  climbing,  the 
men  with  a  view,  that  you  should  be  telling  him, 
morning  and  evening,  as  he  sits  in  his  London 
cellule.  Whereas  instead,  with  his  birthright 
ever  broadening  about  him,  you  still  drearily 
drag  him  after  you  to  Bow  Street,  where  you 
photograph  him  in  his  pitiful  queue  for  to- 
morrow's illustration.  Dear  me,  I'm  afraid  that 
I'm  tub-thumping ;  and  you'll  think  that  I've 


To  Reginald  Pole  193 

forgotten  your  farm  and  your  balloon-house 
and  your  daily  reports  upon  the  cuckoo  and  the 
corn-crake.  But  I  haven't ;  and  what's  more, 
I'm  quite  ready  to  believe  that  if  Bow  Street 
went  out  of  fashion  you'd  be  the  first  to  appre- 
ciate the  fact.  We  should  soon  be  hearing  indeed 
that  you  had  led  the  movement.  And  that's 
why  you  don't  really  stem  the  onward  march  of 
sanity,  though  there  are  casualties  en  route  of 
which  it  would  be  difficult  to  acquit  you.  While 
as  for  your  National  Neurosis,  one  foreign  battery 
on  Primrose  Hill  would  bury  it  for  two  genera- 
tions. 

It  might  also  blow  the  roof  off  Franciscan 
House. 


"  But  poor  Reggie  can't  do  anything  by 
himself,"  says  Esther. 

"  They  all  say  that,"  I  grumble. 

"  And  haven't  you  been  just  a  little  bit  rude  ?  " 

"  I'm  attacking  a  point  of  view,"  I  explain, 
"  and  I  feel  rather  heated." 

She  looks  over  my  shoulder  reproachfully. 

"  And  you've  never  even  mentioned  our  having 
the  baby  when  they  take  the  '  Nautilus '  to 
Italy." 


194         T&e  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

"  No  more  I  have." 

"  And  it's  the  very  thing  I  told  you  to  write 
about." 

And  this  is  true.     For  we  must  have  the  baby. 
Yr.  sorrowful  friend, 

P.  H. 

P.S. — This   letter   almost   makes   me   wondei 
why  I  like  you. 


XXIII 

To  Miss  Sarah  Harding,  The  Orphanage, 
Little  Blessington,  Dorset. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

September  6,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  SALLY, 

There  was  a  young  American,  Stephen 
Crane,  who  wrote,  a  few  years  ago,  a  little 
volume  called  "  Wounds  in  the  Rain."  You  may 
have  read  it.  It  was  rather  a  grim  book,  but 
written  with  a  good  deal  of  power,  and  a  promise 
of  more  to  come  that  the  author,  alas,  never  lived 
to  fulfil.  And  not  the  worst  part  of  it  was  its 
title,  with  its  suggestion  of  grey  suffering,  the 
aftermath  alike  of  victory  and  defeat.  And  yet 
I  am  not  sure  that  "  Wounds  in  the  Sun  "  would 
not  literally  have  stood  for  a  far  greater  sum  of 
misery.  Only  he  would  never  have  made  us 
feel  it. 

For  there's  an  implicit  sadness  in  the  monosyl- 
lable rain — in  the  very  sound  of  it — that  depends, 
I  think,  when  you  come  to  analyse  it,  less  upon 
the  ideas  of  water  and  wetness  and  possible  chill 

195 


196         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

that  it  conjures  up,  than  upon  an  underlying 
suggestion  of  something  falling.  It's  a  little  hard 
to  account  for  it — I  would  commend  the  subject 
to  a  metaphysician  if  I  could  be  certain  that  it 
hasn't  already  been  dealt  with  by  him — and  yet 
it's  a  fact,  I  think,  that  we  have  invested  all 
falling  things  with  a  certain  quality  of  tragedy, 
with  at  any  rate  no  single  idea  of  cheerfulness. 
Think  of  what  you  will,  from  little  Susan's  tear 
to  Lucifer,  son  of  the  Morning,  and  of  all  the 
more  material  phenomena  that  lie  between  them 
— cascades,  avalanches,  autumn  leaves — and  you 
will  find  that  while  your  vision  perceives  in  them 
pity,  or  solemnity,  or  terror,  or  even  disgust,  it 
clothes  no  falling  thing  with  actual  joy.  And 
the  swifter  the  fall  the  more  profound  are  these 
sentiments  that  it  engenders. 

Thus  the  sheer  waterfall,  spilling  itself  un- 
broken over  some  brooding  crag  into  a  pit  of 
blackness,  contains  just  so  much  more  gloom  than 
the  torrent,  leaping  down  from  rock  to  rock,  as 
its  descent  is  more  vertical  and  headlong.  The 
thistledown,  sliding  earthwards  upon  the  wind,  is 
less  tragic  than  the  rain-sodden  beech-leaf  by 
just  the  measure  of  its  longer  passage  through 
the  air.  While  the  rain  that  drives  horizon- 
tally against  one's  Burberry  may  be  a  good 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  197 

deal  more  penetrating,  but  is  seldom  so  dismal  as 
that  which  drops  down  undisturbed  from  the 
drab  sky  to  earth. 

I  believe  that  there  is  a  sermon  in  all  this  some- 
where— in  the  universal  instinct  with  which  we 
find  sorrow,  or  at  least  some  factor  of  it,  in  all 
that  falls ;  and  joy,  or  at  any  rate  its  suggestion, 
in  most  things  that  rise  up,  and  open,  and  turn 
themselves  towards  the  heavens.  But  I'll  spare 
you  the  preaching  of  it,  since  these  reflections 
merely  spring  to  my  mind  as  the  result,  last 
Saturday,  of  a  particularly  wet  tramp  from  Beer 
to  Sidmouth. 

I  had  been  called  down  in  consultation  on 
Friday,  and  having  spent  the  night  in  the  sick 
man's  house,  decided  next  morning  to  walk  the 
eight  miles  along  the  coast.  It  was  one  of  those 
baffling  Devonshire  mornings  of  rain  and  mist 
with  rhythmical  promises,  never  fulfilled,  of  a 
watery  sunshine  to  come ;  and  both  my  hostess 
and  the  local  doctor  were  fain  to  press  motor- 
cars upon  me.  But  I  had  made  up  my  mind,  and 
assured  them  that  I  was  one  of  those  many  people 
— possibly  foolish — who  rather  enjoyed  a  walk  in 
the  rain. 

My  host,  who  was  by  way  of  being  a  philosopher 
as  well  as  an  invalid,  looked  at  me  with  a  twinkle. 


198          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

"  So  you  really  think  you  like  it  ?  "  he  asked  me. 

"  Yes,"  I  told  him.    "  I  really  do  like  it." 

He  put  a  hand  on  my  shoulder. 

"  No,  you  don't,"  he  said.  "  Just  think  it  over 
between  here  and  Sidmouth." 

And  he  was  right.  Before  I  had  walked  two  miles 
I  knew  that  he  was  right.  I  don't  enjoy  walking  in 
the  rain,  though  I  often  do  it,  and  always  claim  to 
like  it.  I  merely  walk  in  it  for  the  rather  subtle 
enjoyment  of  getting  out  of  it,  and  for  the  sake 
of  plumbing  a  little  more  deeply,  at  my  journey's 
end,  the  everyday  delights  of  dryness,  warmth, 
and  a  deep-bosomed  chair.  I  become  a  Tibetan 
at  the  prayer- wheel  storing  up  joys  to  come  in  a 
whetted  appetite  for  to-morrow's  blue  sky.  For 
though  I  must  admit  that  there's  a  certain  decora- 
tive effect  about  rain  over  a  countryside,  yet  it's 
an  effect  of  pure  melancholy,  scientifically  un- 
founded of  course — at  any  rate  until  science  can 
explain  the  proposition  at  the  beginning  of  this 
letter — heightening  loneliness,  exaggerating  the 
hardship  of  toil,  deepening  the  horror  of  death, 
but  adding  quite  an  extraordinary  power  to  any 
gleam  of  even  the  tearfullest  of  sunshine  that 
may  have  stumbled  into  some  corner  of  the  land- 
scape. And  there's  always  the  possibility  of  that 
gleam  being  the  herald  of  a  sudden  conquest  of 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  199 

glory,  in  whose  triumph  your  merely  fair-weather 
pedestrian  can  never  have  a  part. 

Thus  a  memory  comes  back  to  me,  for  instance, 
of  a  dreary  five-in-the-morning  start,  a  hopeless 
breakfast,  a  dogged  rain-soaked  tramp  up  the  steep 
hillside — and  then  the  summit  of  Ben  Lomond,  a 
very  ark  above  the  flood,  borne  up,  as  it  were, 
into  the  midmost  sanctuary  of  heaven,  with  the 
submerging  seas  rolling  out  to  the  world's  end, 
and  the  wind  thrilling  over  them  like  an  organ. 
Ten  minutes  ago,  and  the  sun  had  lost  itself  for 
ever.  And  now  it  flamed  there  like  the  white 
throne  of  God,  till  the  horizons  melted  before 
its  gaze,  and  the  great  dead  began  majestically  to 
rise — Ben  More,  Ben  Lawers,  the  Cairngorms, 
and  the  distant  peaks  of  Arran. 

My  sunshine  on  Saturday  last  however  was  not, 
I  should  think,  more  than  twelve  years  old.  She 
was  standing  rather  pensively  (but  without  agita- 
tion) near  a  cottage  gate  ;  and  fortunately  I  had 
provided  myself  with  some  bulls'-eyes  at  a  village 
called  Branscombe,  where  a  kindly  old  lady  had 
assured  me  that  there  was  still  a  great  demand 
for  them.  I  extracted  one  from  the  bag,  and 
was  thanked  politely  but  by  no  means  deferen- 
tially. There  was  a  moment's  pause  during  which 
a  damp  physician  was  being  gravely  relegated  to 


2OO         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

his  proper  sphere  in  the  natural  scheme  of  things 
— an  obviously  humble  one.  Then  she  threw  me 
a  fact. 

"  Nellie  arn't  got  one,"  she  observed. 

So  I  gave  her  one  for  Nellie. 

"  Anybody  else  ?  "  I  inquired. 

She  looked  down  for  a  minute  at  the  plump 
and  striped  confection. 

"  Mother  likes  them  things,"  she  said — and  I 
had  seen  by  this  time,  of  course,  that  her  mother 
must  be  a  very  nice  mother.  So  she  accepted 
one  for  mother. 

"  And  is  that  all  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  Well,"  she  said  doubtfully,  "  Baby's  just  arf 
to  sleep." 

And  this  is  all  that  I  shall  ever  remember  about 
the  road  from  Beer  to  Sidmouth. 

I  am  finding  it  harder  than  ever  this  year  to 
get  a  summer  holiday.  And  while  these  little 
glimpses  of  the  country  merely  sharpen  my  desire 
for  more,  I  find  myself  telling  myself  sternly  that 
I  must  really  learn  to  be  contented  with  them. 
And  at  any  rate  I  have  been  enabled  to  see  more 
of  the  hospital  than  for  some  time  past ;  and,  as 
you  know,  this  is  to  be  my  last  year  there  as  a 
visiting  physician. 

This  afternoon,  my  junior  being  salmon-fishing 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  201 

in  Norway,  I  thought  that  I  would  take  the 
out-patients  for  the  first  time  in  twelve  years ; 
and  the  clinical  assistant  proving  not  unwilling 
to  go  and  play  tennis,  I  amused  myself  with  seeing 
the  lot  of  them.  For  there's  no  other  commen- 
tary upon  men  and  manners  quite  like  a  collection 
of  out-patients  at  a  large  hospital.  Listen  there- 
fore to  a  stalwart  gentleman  who  earns  twenty 
shillings  a  week,  and  doesn't  stint  himself  in  beer. 

"  Debility,  doctor,"  he  said,  "  that's  what's  the 
metter  with  me."  He  dropped  his  voice  huskily. 
"  Domestic  trouble,"  he  added. 

"  Dear  me,"  I  sympathised,  feeling  his  pulse. 
"  Serious  ?  " 

"  Twins,"  he  said  gloomily  ;  "  second  lot  I've 
'ed  in  eighteen  months ;  an'  I  think  it's  run  me 
down." 

Your  aff.  brother, 

PETER. 


XXIV 

To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding,  S.  Peter's  College, 
Morecambe  Bay. 

c/o  HARRY  CARTHEW,  CROME  LODGE, 
NEAR  CAVERSHAM,  BERKS, 

September  14,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  BRUCE, 

I  am  very  glad  to  hear  that  you  have  had 
such  an  excellent  holiday  in  Switzerland,  and 
brought  home  four  or  five  more  mountain  scalps 
to  your  Cumberland  wigwam.  But  it's  rather  sad 
that  the  little  storm  that  was  brewing  at  S.  Peter's 
before  you  left  should  have  burst  in  thunder  and 
lightning  during  your  absence.  Knowing  both 
Merridew  and  Rogers,  I  quite  agree  with  you 
that  it  was  probably  inevitable,  and  may  ulti- 
mately tend  to  a  clearer  atmosphere.  Meanwhile 
however  the  little  community  makes  war  from 
opposite  camps,  and  there  is  a  great  deal  of  un- 
necessary bitterness  in  their  tactics  that  seems 
likely  to  increase  when  Rogers  comes  back  from 
London.  And,  as  you  say,  it's  all  rather  sad  and 
sordid,  and  only  humorous  because  the  parish 

202 


To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding         203 

is  so  small  and  the  whole  storm  contained,  as  it 
were,  in  one  of  its  afternoon  teacups.  But  then 
most  parishes  are  comparatively  small,  and  we 
all  have  to  live  in  one  or  other  of  them,  and  storms 
in  teacups  are  apt  to  be  just  as  devastating  as  any 
other  kind  of  storm — even  more  so  perhaps,  be- 
cause it's  so  much  easier  on  these  occasions  to 
insist  upon  recommending  one's  own  particular 
infusion  of  tannin,  than  to  insert  instead  an  un- 
obtrusive drop  or  two  of  the  calming  milk  of 
human  kindness.  Whereas  cyclones  have  a  habit 
of  setting  us  shoulder  to  shoulder,  by  virtue  of  the 
unanimous  discovery  that  they  rather  suddenly 
engender  of  the  extraordinary  unimportance  of 
our  differences. 

So  on  the  whole  I'm  with  you  in  preferring 
cyclones,  although  at  first  I  was  rather  inclined 
to  disagree  with  your  assertion  that  this  little 
flare-up  between  Rogers  and  your  new  vicar  was 
merely  a  somewhat  exaggerated  instance  of  the 
general  underlying  hostility  that  seems  to  exist 
between  Medicine  and  the  Church. 

I  was  for  pointing  out  to  you,  with  some  vigour, 
the  fact  that  we  both  have  friends,  not  a  few,  in 
the  consulting-room  and  cloth  respectively,  to 
whom  we  can  talk  with  a  complete  frankness,  and 
in  the  assurance  of  a  reciprocated  understanding. 


204         The   Corner  of  Harley  Street 

And  yet,  on  second  thoughts,  I  am  reluctantly 
sure  that  you  are  right,  and  that,  speaking  in  very 
general  terms,  there  does  exist  some  such  feeling 
as  you  have  named — less  hostility,  perhaps,  than  a 
decently  veiled  distrust.  It's  a  little  hard  to  see 
why  this  should  be  the  case.  For  there  would 
appear  superficially  to  be  at  least  a  hundred 
reasons  why  the  precisely  opposite  should  be 
true.  Perhaps  the  foundation  of  it  is  historical. 
Centuries  enough  have  not  yet  rolled  away  since 
medicine  came  out  of  the  side  of  priestcraft ; 
so  that  on  the  one  hand  there  is  still  an  occasional 
smarting  of  the  old  wound,  and  on  the  other  a 
little  over-insistence,  perhaps,  upon  a  complete 
and  rather  superior  liberty — tradition  still  loom- 
ing somewhat  largely  in  the  education  of  the 
young  clergyman,  and  reverence  being  not,  per- 
haps, a  particularly  prominent  feature  in  the 
training  of  his  medical  brother.  In  any  case, 
there  it  is ;  and  though  I  think  that  Rogers  has 
been  wrong,  or  at  any  rate  tactless,  in  his  op- 
position to  the  extra  services  that  Merridew 
wishes  to  hold  in  the  cottage  hospital,  it  seems 
to  me  that  your  two  protagonists  are  very  typical 
of  all  that  is  best  (and  possibly  least  reconcilable) 
on  either  side.  For  on  the  one  hand  you  have 
Merridew,  ardent,  sincere,  sacerdotal,  and 


To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding         205 

nearly  young  enough  to  account  for,  though  not 
of  course  to  justify,  Rogers's  rudeness  in  referring 
to  him  as  "  the  boy  from  Cuddesdon."  And  on 
the  other,  you  have  Rogers,  equally  genuine, 
generous,  uncompromising,  and  almost  fiercely 
insistent  in  his  demand  for  intellectual  honesty. 
Indeed  I  think  his  rather  truculent  materialism 
is  far  more  an  expression  of  this  desire  than  an 
exact  creed  of  his  personal  belief.  And  both  men, 
it  seems  to  me,  are  so  obviously  the  logical  pro- 
ducts of  their  respective  upbringings. 

Of  Merridew's  I  can  only  speak  of  course  as  an 
outsider.  His  father,  whom  I  knew  very  slightly, 
was  himself  a  clergyman  of  the  old  High  Church 
type,  moderately  wealthy,  refined  to  the  utter- 
most, acutely  sensitive,  artistic,  yet  as  rigid  in 
his  standards  as  any  Cromwellian  Ironside.  He 
was  happily  married,  and  his  home — and  young 
Merridew's — was,  almost  necessarily,  like  him- 
self. Merridew  was  the  only  child,  and  when  his 
father  died,  while  he  was  still  at  Lancing,  it  was 
only  natural  that  he  should  resolve  to  enter  the 
Church,  and  that  his  mother  should  henceforth 
devote  herself  almost  entirely  to  his  welfare  and 
to  the  furtherance  of  these  boyish  resolutions. 
Leaving  Lancing,  he  went  up  to  his  father's  old 
college  at  Cambridge,  commended  to  his  tutors, 


206         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

and  known  to  his  fellow-undergraduates,  from 
the  outset,  as  a  candidate  for  Holy  Orders.  And 
here — again  as  a  perfectly  accepted  consequence 
— he  took  his  degree  in  classics,  and  dabbled  a 
little  in  history.  He  was  not  unpopular.  His 
ardour,  never  awkward,  procured  him  many 
friends  and  indeed  followers  among  like-minded 
youths  with  a  similar  future  in  front  of  them ; 
and,  being  adequately  athletic,  he  was  on  friendly, 
if  not  intimate,  terms  with  a  good  many  others. 
At  twenty-two  or  so  he  left  Cambridge  for 
Cuddesdon,  and  at  twenty-four  he  obtained  a 
curacy  in  Hoxton,  where  he  overworked  himself 
for  four  years.  He  was  then,  I  think,  an  assistant 
priest  at  a  fashionable  church  in  Kensington, 
until  he  was  presented  by  one  of  his  uncles  with 
the  living  of  S.  Peter's.  Those  are  the  external 
facts,  and,  as  a  guesser  from  the  opposite  camp, 
I  may  very  likely  go  wrong  in  estimating  their 
inner  significances.  But  it  seems  to  me — and  in 
talking  with  Merridew  I  am  always  conscious  of 
this — that  as  the  inevitable  result  of  this  training 
he  has  been  surrounded  by  a  kind  of  protective 
aura,  now  almost  impenetrable,  that  has  inter- 
posed itself,  as  it  were,  between  himself,  as  an 
anointed  priest,  and  the  great  tides  of  actual  life 
that  go  surging  about  him.  Little  by  little  it 


To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding         207 

was  created  for  him  by  his  parents.  The  vicissi- 
tudes of  school  life  made  him  cling  to  it  only 
the  more  firmly.  Cambridge,  and  the  conspiracy 
of  silence  that,  to  a  lesser  extent,  surrounds  the 
embryo  and  younger  clergy  as  certainly  as  it  does 
their  sisters  at  home,  merely  strengthened  it  four- 
fold ;  so  that  when  he  left  Cuddesdon  there  it 
was  complete — his  lifebelt  for  the  conflicting 
seas  of  reality — and  not  only  about  his  waist,  but 
also  to  a  large  extent  encircling  his  intellect. 
For  if  you  examine  his  education  you  will 
find,  I  think,  that  never  in  all  that  time  was  he 
encouraged,  for  himself  and  by  himself,  to  dis- 
cover, to  classify,  to  co-relate,  one  single  naked 
fact  of  real  existence.  Science  was  then,  and 
has  always  been,  in  its  inward  sense,  a  thing  un- 
known to  him.  Of  the  living  stuff  of  humanity 
he  was  given  not  the  smallest  primary  notion. 
And  his  observation  of  it  since  has  been  that  of 
a  man  who  has  never  been  equipped  with  the 
first  unprejudiced  principles  of  observation  at 
all.  Of  heredity  and  psychology  he  knows  not 
a  line.  And  of  their  results  in  actual  character 
and  conduct  he  can  perceive,  as  a  rule,  only  as 
much  as  the  normal  man  will  reveal  to  the  present 
type  of  normal  parson — while  even  of  that  he 
has  never  been  given  the  wherewithal  to  judge. 


208         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

Rogers,  on  the  other  hand,  was  the  son  of  a 
small  Northampton  milliner.  At  the  age  of 
fourteen  he  ran  away  to  sea,  where  he  served  for 
four  years  in  all  sorts  of  ships,  in  all  sorts  of 
capacities.  It  was  on  one  of  these  that  some  rough 
and  ready,  but  skilful,  surgery,  by  which  a  young 
ship's  doctor  removed  some  broken  bone  from 
the  brain  of  a  comrade  who  had  fallen  from  the 
rigging,  first  fired  him  with  the  desire  to  be  a 
surgeon.  He  returned  home  to  find  his  father 
dead  and  his  mother  in  straitened  circumstances. 
He  got  work  in  a  boot  factory,  and  studied  at 
night  schools  for  his  preliminary  examination. 
Having  passed  this,  he  went  back  to  sea  for  a 
year,  and  then,  coming  up  to  London,  he  managed 
to  attend  at  hospital  by  day,  while  he  kept  him- 
self as  dispenser,  bottle-washer,  and  general  handy 
man  to  a  dispensing  practitioner  in  his  spare 
hours. 

By  this  means,  and  with  the  aid  of  a  scholarship 
or  two,  he  obtained  his  diplomas,  and  started  a 
cash  surgery  near  Waterloo.  Five  years  later  he 
was  a  Fellow  of  the  College  of  Surgeons,  and  in 
another  three  had  become  a  member  of  his 
hospital  staff.  For  a  year  or  so  he  found  it  pretty 
hard  to  make  both  ends  meet  behind  his  modest 
plate  (one  of  five)  upon  a  front  door  in  Harley 


To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding         209 

Street.  But  then  the  tide  began  to  turn.  A 
brilliant  paper  or  two  marked  him  out  as  a  coming 
man.  A  new  and  admirable  method  of  perform- 
ing a  certain  cerebral  operation  became  associated 
with  his  name.  And  in  ten  years'  time  he  had 
become  perhaps  the  foremost  brain  surgeon  in 
London.  Twelve  years  after  this  he  lost  a  hand, 
in  consequence  of  a  post-mortem  infection,  but 
retired  a  wealthy  man,  though  at  first  a  rather 
disconsolate  one.  For  a  time  his  love  of  the  sea 
reasserted  itself,  and  he  travelled.  Then,  as  you 
know,  he  found  a  retreat  that  suited  him  on  the 
shores  of  Cumberland,  where  he  has  built,  en- 
dowed, and  kept  lavishly  up-to-date  the  little 
cottage  hospital  about  which  your  teacup  storm 
is  raging. 

You  may  tell  me,  perhaps,  that  both  Rogers  and 
Merridew  are  extreme  instances.  But  if  they 
are,  it  is  in  degree  only  and  not  in  kind.  For 
behind  Rogers  I  can  see  a  large  and  quickly 
growing  army  of  thinking  men  and  women,  risen 
like  him  from  what  are  called  the  masses,  vigorous 
of  mind  and  hard  of  muscle,  men  accustomed 
to  deal  with  life  at  first  hand,  trained  to  observe, 
quick  to  deduct,  unhampered,  if  perhaps  a  little 
too  unmoved  by  tradition,  state-makers,  ex- 
plorers, and  men  withal  not  impervious  to,  but  on 
o 


2 1  o         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

the  contrary  almost  passionately  eager  for  the 
truth. 

And  behind  Merridew  I  can  see  many,  if  not 
most,  of  his  brethren,  men  of  fine  instincts  and 
real  devotedness — narrow-minded  in  none  but 
the  most  literal  sense,  and  in  that  merely  because 
of  the  school  that  has  moulded  them — men  who 
would  cheerfully  give  all  that  they  possess  to  be 
able  to  influence  in  any  substantial  degree  the 
great  world's  dreamers  and  doers.  And  behind 
them  again  I  can  see  their  Church. 


Curiously  enough,  we  have  just  been  discussing 
something  of  all  this  upon  Carthew's  Thames- 
side  lawn.  We  had  crossed  the  river  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  walked  up,  about  a  couple  of  miles,  to  a 
neighbouring  village  church.  And  now,  as  I 
write  to  you  in  the  boat  under  the  willows,  they 
seem  to  me — the  temple  and  its  service — to  have 
been  almost  tragically  symbolic.  The  village 
itself,  on  the  outskirts  of  Reading,  consists  of  a 
rustic  core,  about  which  time  and  circumstance 
have  wrapped  several  red-brick  layers,  the  inner- 
most containing  workers  from  the  various  shops 
and  factories  of  the  neighbouring  town,  together 
with  a  sprinkling  of  day-labourers  in  the  country 


To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding         2 1 1 

round ;  and  the  outer  accommodating  some 
superior  clerks  and  their  families,  a  few  of  the 
more  substantial  Reading  tradesmen,  and  the  in- 
evitable retired  colonel. 

Most  of  these,  as  we  passed  upon  our  way,  were 
smoking  over  the  Sunday  papers  in  their  front 
gardens,  or  preparing  for  a  morning  to  be  spent 
upon  the  river ;  and  the  church  was  far  from 
their  midst,  a  mile  in  fact  beyond  their  extremest 
outskirts.  Moreover  the  day  was  hot,  and  the 
road  to  it  dusty. 

The  building  itself  was  neither  old  nor  new, 
and  we  were  shown  into  a  pew  beneath  a  large 
stained-glass  window  that  almost  immediately 
began,  in  spite  of  myself,  to  monopolise  my 
attention.  The  congregation  consisted,  of  course, 
mainly  of  women.  ("  It  will  be  the  same  in  the 
Hereafter,"  my  Aunt  Josephine  once  assured  me 
when  commenting  upon  the  same  phenomenon.) 
But  there  were  about  thirty  men  present,  for 
the  most  part  gnarled  and  sunburnt  sons  of  the 
field,  in  uncomfortable,  ready-made  suits — men, 
as  I  guessed,  in  whose  veins  there  still  ran  some- 
thing of  the  older  homage  once  shared  by  parson 
and  squire.  What  was  this  particular  parson  going 
to  give  them,  I  wondered,  as  mental  and  moral 
food  for  the  week's  sustenance  ?  His  delivery  of 


2 1 2         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

the  prayers  and  lessons  was  not  very  promising. 
It  was  not  that  he  had  any  physical  impediment 
in  his  speech.  It  was  merely  that  he  had  never 
been  taught  to  produce  his  sounds  effectively, 
and  that  Oxford  and  his  clubs  had  successfully 
schooled  him  into  eliminating  any  tincture  of 
emotion  from  their  quality.  But  he  might  still, 
of  course,  have  a  message  in  waiting  for  us  from 
the  pulpit. 

He  preached  upon  the  value  of  communicating 
before  breakfast ;  and,  as  far  as  I  could  see,  his 
remarks  upon  the  subject  were  received,  especially 
by  the  male  portion  of  his  congregation,  with  the 
same  kind  of  curious,  impassive  gusto  that  had 
been  noticeable  in  their  delivery  of  the  responses 
and  the  hymns.  I  remember  a  verse  of  one  of 
these,  and  am  quoting  it  exactly  : 

Whatever,  Lord,  we  lend  to  Thee 
Repaid  a  thousandfold  will  be  ; 
Then  gladly  will  we  give  to  Thee, 
Who  givest  all. 

Could  they  have  known  what  they  were  sing- 
ing ?  Had  their  vicar  read  these  lines  before  he 
gave  them  out  ?  Let  us  hope  not. 

But,  as  I  said,  it  was  the  stained-glass  window 
that  dominated  me,  and  seemed  to  contain  in 


To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding         2 1 3 

itself  an  epitome — yet  not  quite  that,  perhaps — 
of  sermon  and  service  and  hymn,  and  the  system 
that  had  made  their  survival  possible  in  twentieth- 
century  England.  And  yet,  let  me  first  put 
down  that  through  it  came  light,  real  if  distorted, 
and  distilled,  but  how  faintly,  from  the  true 
arch  of  the  outside  heaven.  And  let  me  not 
forget  this  as  I  go  on  to  remember  its  eight  divi- 
sions, containing  each  a  worshipping  and  appar- 
ently musical  young  woman,  arrayed  as  no  being 
has  ever  been  arrayed,  and  regarding  with  up- 
turned eyes — well,  fortunately  the  artist  had 
stopped  short  there,  though  merely,  one  fears, 
from  want  of  space.  I  have  called  these  maidens 
musical  for  the  rather  inadequate  reason  that  in 
the  hands  of  each  were  instruments  by  and 
through  which  sounds  might  conceivably  be  pro- 
duced. But  at  the  nature  of  these  one  could,  alas, 
guess  only  too  readily.  Even  in  the  grasp  of 
experts  one  would  have  been  justly  dubious  about 
the  capabilities  of  those  two-stringed  violins,  that 
one-keyed  portable  organ,  those  twin-trumpets 
with  a  common  mouthpiece.  And  imagination 
reeled  before  their  combined  contemplation  in 
the  hands  of  these  anaemic  and  self-evident  ama- 
teurs. Nor  could  one  turn  from  the  subject,  and 
find  consolation  in  its  colour  or  history.  The 


214         T&e  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

window  was  not  forty  years  old,  and  the  colour 
was  but  a  ghost  of  what  colour  might  be. 

The  whole  window  indeed  was  but  a  ghost — a 
ghost,  manufactured  at  the  thirtieth  hand,  of 
the  mediaeval  work  of  some  laborious  but  crude 
designer.  And  what,  one  wondered,  could  be 
even  its  pretended  message  to  the  full-blooded, 
restless,  and  instructed  generation  of  to-day  ? 
Could  these  sallow-cheeked  saints,  these  obviously 
unhealthy,  ill-nourished,  incapable  young  women, 
tell  anything  worth  the  hearing  upon  any  single 
plane  of  thought  or  conduct  to  the  men  and 
women  of  1910  ?  Could  they  indeed  preach  any 
other  possible  sermon  than  to  cry  out  to  all 
would-be  healthy  people  to  flee  away  from  them 
into  the  outer  sunshine  ?  Were  they  even  justi- 
fied as  reflections,  infinitely  remote,  of  the  pale 
Galilean  of  Gautier  and  Swinburne  ?  And  was 
there  in  fact  ever  a  pale  Galilean,  the  least  of 
Whose  doctrines  they  could  ever  imaginably  have 
embodied  ?  Was  that  sturdy,  sun-browned 
Youth,  with  His  carpenter's  wrists  and  His 
physical  endurance,  with  His  undreamed  spiritual 
forces  and  His  splendid  sanity  in  their  control, 
with  the  glory  of  His  emancipating  conceptions 
and  His  divine  simplicity  in  their  exposition — 
was  He  ever  such  as  to  be  thus  pallidly  worshipped 


To  the  Rev.   Bruce  Harding         2 1  $ 

save  in  the  twilight  imageries  of  earlier  centuries 
and  the  resentful  poetry  of  rebellious  thinkers  ? 
And  I  couldn't  help  wondering  if  my  stained- 
glass  window  had  perhaps  cast  its  spell  not  only 
upon  the  aisles,  but  the  authority  of  the  Church 
that  had  set  it  up. 

Only  a  year  or  two  ago,  for  instance,  I  remember 
being  assured  by  a  youthful  priest  from  Cam- 
bridge, who  had  scarcely  ever  stirred  beyond  his 
East  End  settlement,  that,  while  he  would  refrain 
from  setting  a  limit  to  God's  mercy,  no  man  could 
really  be  considered  safe  who  had  not  made  verbal 
confession  of  his  sins  to  himself  or  one  of  his 
brothers.  And  only  last  week,  upon  the  beach  at 
Swanage,  I  heard  another  young  clergyman,  of 
a  rather  more  so-called  evangelical  way  of  think- 
ing, most  positively  assuring  a  ring  of  little 
children  that  the  Devil  was  even  then  whispering 
in  their  ears  what  a  good  time  he  would  like  to 
give  them.  No  wonder  that  the  Carthews  and 
the  Rogers'  stand  aside,  and  wait  impatiently  for 
the  coming  of  the  New  Word  or  of  the  Old  one 
as  it  was.  And  no  wonder  that  men  and  women, 
more  really  religious  now,  perhaps,  than  ever  in 
history,  look  on  at  it  all  rather  dubiously  in  a 
healthy  hesitation,  or  turn  frankly  away  to  the 
tennis-lawn  and  river. 


2 1 6         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

I  have  been  watching  them  all  the  afternoon 
plying  their  oars  here  upon  the  Thames — strong 
and  ruddy,  keen-faced  artisans  from  Reading, 
actresses  from  town,  barristers,  doctors,  men  of 
leisure,  and  men  of  affairs.  And  now,  as  I  write, 
they  are  plying  still,  while  across  the  fields  comes 
the  ineffectual  call  of  the  various  ecclesiastical 
bells.  By  some  they  are  not  even  heard,  I  sup- 
pose. They  are  singing  choruses  from  "  Our 
Miss  Gibbs."  To  others  they  are  just  decorative 
in  the  region  of  river  sounds,  as  the  loose- 
strife and  charlock  in  that  of  its  colours.  To  a 
few  they  must  even  be  merely  sad.  They  might 
mean — they  once  have  meant — so  much  to  their 
country's  seething  life.  And  now  they  would 
seem  to  contain  almost  less  significance  than  the 
gramophone  in  the  steam-launch  round  the 
corner. 

A  few  moments  ago  the  Bishop,  Carthew's 
newly-acquired  brother-in-law,  was  leaning  for- 
ward in  his  chair. 

"  If  you  knew,"  he  said,  "  the  real  agony  with 
which  the  Church  has  to  face  these  problems." 

Carthew  nodded. 

"  Yes,"  he  said  slowly,  "  parturition's  always 
painful — especially  to  the  elderly — but  the  price 
for  shirking  it " 


'To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding         217 

"  Is  sterility,"  said  the  Bishop.  "  I  know.  But 
we  don't  want  your  pity.  We  want  your 
help." 

Carthew  knocked  the  ashes  out  of  his  pipe. 

"  Then  first,"  he  said,  "  you  must  get  rid  of 
those  lifebelts,  where  the  race  goes  past  them, 
and  teach  your  clergy  to  swim.  And  then  you 
must  keep  'em  swimming.  And  you  must  see 
that  they  swim  first.  Don't  stultify  their  efforts 
by  askin'  'em  to  square  impossible  traditions  with 
new  truths,  or  mediaeval  ethics  with  essential 
Christianity.  Don't  call  'em  unsound  because 
they  have  inklings  inside  'em  that  Revelation 
didn't  cease  with  St.  John  or  interpretation  with 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  Let  'em  have  Visions 
of  their  own.  Tell  'em  to  go  out,  and  make  dis- 
coveries. Let  'em  dare  to  be  simple  —  really 
simple,  that  is.  And  trust  God  and  human  kind- 
ness to  do  the  rest." 

I  don't  think  that  he  was  speaking  lightly,  but 
the  Bishop  looked  at  him  for  a  moment  rather 
closely. 

"  You're  a  believer  ?  "  he  said.  "  You  don't 
mind  my  asking  ?  " 

"  Not  a  bit,"  said  Carthew.  "  I'm  a  believer. 
And  what's  more,  I'm  a  believer  in  an  organised, 
visible  Church,  not  because  it's  vital,  but  because 


2 1 8         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

it's  expedient.  Only  its  stained-glass  windows, 
if  they  must  be  stained,  should  contain  black- 
smiths and  boxers  and  wireless  telegraphists,  with 
some  bank  clerks  and  a  bus  driver,  and  of  course 
some  children,"  Mrs.  Carthew  had  just  brought 
out  the  twins,  "for  of  such  is  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven." 

Your  affect,  cousin, 

PETER  HARDING. 

P.S. — Rogers  is  coming  to  dinner  with  us,  as 
you  suggested,  before  he  goes  back  to  Cumber- 
land. 


XXV 

To  Hugh  Pontrex,  Villa  Rosa,  Mentone. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

October  3,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  HUGH, 

When  you  write  and  ask  me  to  tell  you 
what  books  I  read  during  my  illness  I  can  see 
an  ancient  accusation  of  yours  peering  at  me 
behind  the  question — as  though  you  had  visibly 
added  that,  except  when  indisposed,  I  never 
read  books  at  all.  And  if  it  weren't  that  I  too 
find  other  people's  reading  so  interesting,  though 
less  informing  perhaps  than  their  pictures, 
I  might  possibly  stand  upon  my  dignity,  and 
decline  to  supply  you  with  an  answer.  And 
in  any  case,  now  that  I  come  to  reflect  a  little, 
this  will  be  rather  a  difficult  thing  to  do.  For 
having  got  me  at  a  disadvantage,  you  see,  I 
could  no  longer  pick  and  choose,  as  is  my  wont 
when  the  health  within  me  is  rude  and  exacting. 
I  could  no  longer  demand  haughtily  of  a  book 
that  it  must  make  me  read  it,  or  remain  within  its 
covers  for  ever  unread.  My  defences  were  down, 

219 


220          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

and  I  had  perforce  to  roll  over,  hands  up,  for 
anything  in  the  shape  of  book  with  which 
Accident  and  Mudie  had  happened  to  endow 
my  house.  And  as  a  result  I  read  half  a  dozen 
novels  that,  as  the  Americans  say,  left  me  cold, 
although  I  must  needs  give  them  the  credit  of 
having  whiled  away  the  time.  Moreover,  before 
dismissing  them  thus  unkindly,  I  must  remember 
that  they  were  each  the  work  of  somebody's 
hand  and  brain,  and  the  hard  work  too — at  any 
rate  so  far  as  the  hand  was  concerned — as  anyone 
who  has  tried  to  put  eighty  thousand  words  of 
even  unimaginative  English  upon  paper  would 
surely  bear  witness.  Some  of  it  too,  one  could 
see,  was  the  rather  tired  work  of  minds  that 
should  really  have  been  (perhaps  only  too  will- 
ingly) lying  fallow  of  production.  And  I  think 
that  I  noticed  this  particularly  in  an  altogether  un- 
important little  volume  called  "  Daisy's  Aunt " 
by  Mr.  E.  F.  Benson,  that  may  well  stand  for  a 
sorrowful  example.  It's  true  that  it  was  merely 
a  two-shilling  story  ;  but  even  so,  it  was  surely 
an  unworthy  one.  And  yet,  I  suppose,  there  is  a 
public  that  likes  to  devour  these  descriptions  of 
very  ordinary  London  drawing-rooms  and  very 
usual  Thames-side  bungalows — that  would  fain 
listen  to  even  the  weariest  repetitions  of  the 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  221 

somewhat  annoying  slang  of  the  "  oh  you  heavenly 
person "  type  that  for  the  moment  is  being 
affected  by  Mr.  Benson's  "  quite  nice  people." 
And  having  thus  found,  or  created,  such  a 
public,  and  designed  the  precise  bait  that  it 
requires,  I  suppose  that  one  is  justified  in  hooking, 
as  often  as  may  be,  one's  share  of  their  two- 
shilling  pieces.  But  alas  for  the  artist  in  Mr. 
Benson,  in  whose  books  there  have  been  passages 
good  enough  of  their  kind  to  have  made,  perhaps, 
three  or  four  pieces  of  real  literature  that  few,  I 
suppose,  would  have  bought,  but  that  some,  at  any 
rate,  would  have  liked  to  keep  upon  their  shelves. 
And  yet  again,  who  is  to  say  that  Mr.  Benson 
(as  representing  not  a  few)  has  not  after  all 
chosen  his  better  way  ?  For  if  his  popularity 
has  been  costly,  it  is  at  any  rate  of  a  clean  and 
healthy  sort,  and  one  that  may  well,  perhaps,  be 
substituting  itself  for  vogues  unworthier  and 
less  wholesome. 

They  form  an  interesting  study,  these  three 
brothers,  not  merely  in  heredity  of  talent,  but 
because,  as  it  seems  to  me,  they  stand  very  high  in 
that  small  but  growing  band  of  really  able  writers, 
who  possess  also  the  knack  of  a  popular  appeal. 
The  sons  of  a  religious,  scholarly,  and  discreet 
father,  who  himself  had  the  power  of  attracting 


222         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

both  attention  and  success,  these  qualities, 
with  no  suspicion  of  a  more  wayward  genius, 
have  descended  upon  them  in  very  generous 
measure.  The  social  sense,  the  faculty  of  choosing 
the  right  friends,  and  a  gift  for  getting  them  on 
paper ;  the  high  purpose,  clerically  moulded ; 
the  gentle  inward  warring  of  trained  intellect 
and  instinctive  orthodoxy ;  to  each  has  fallen  a 
share  of  his  father's  mantle,  wherewith  to  make 
himself  a  garment.  And  the  mental  pabulum  that 
they  provide  is  just  what  is  wanted  by  a  large 
number  of  active,  intelligent  men  and  women 
to  whom  genius  is  at  all  times  unsympathetic  ; 
and  by  the  yet  greater  company — including 
most  of  us,  I  suppose — to  whom  its  strongest 
appeal  is  a  matter  of  mood  and  place.  Every 
generation  seems  to  provide  itself  with  such 
writers,  and  as  a  rule  rewards  them  well ;  and 
while,  no  doubt,  it  is  genius  alone  that  survives, 
with  a  light  that  can  never  remain  hidden,  the 
others,  by  their  more  instant  and  transient 
appeal,  do  yeoman  work,  and  are  gathered 
honourably  to  their  fathers.  For  we  may  not 
always  be  tuned  to  the  tang  of  Stevenson  or 
the  burr  of  Dr.  John  Brown.  But  we  are  seldom 
incapable  of  sitting  with  enjoyment  at  some 
College  Window,  or  allowing  the  lesser  voices 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  223 

to  prepare  us  for  those  that  are  mightier  than 
they. 

And  never,  perhaps,  has  a  generation  possessed 
so  many  of  these.  Never  certainly  has  their  level 
of  eloquence  been  so  high.  Hichens  and  Locke 
and  Anthony  Hope,  Phillpotts,  Marriott,  Munro, 
and  Wells,  with  Hewlett  and  de  Morgan  a 
little  nearer,  perhaps,  to  the  stars,  and  a  score  of 
others  close  upon  their  heels — how  sound  and 
various  is  their  artistry,  and  how  consistent,  as  a 
whole,  is  the  quality  of  their  output.  For  this, 
one  thinks,  must  be  the  besetting  danger  of  all 
these  skilled  professionals — to  avoid,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  Scylla  of  over-repetition  (to  which 
most  of  the  monthly  magazines  were  long  ago 
safely  anchored)  and  on  the  other,  the  more 
dangerous  Charybdis  of  a  too  venturesome 
novelty.  Upon  the  first  (and  still  confining  one- 
self to  the  more  considerable  writers)  Mr.  Benson, 
the  essayist,  for  example,  would  seem,  more  nearly 
than  many,  to  be  in  danger  of  foundering. 
While  upon  the  second  I  can  think  of  Conan  Doyle 
as  having  bumped  as  badly  as  most  writers  of  an 
equal  eminence.  For  while  there  is  no  man  who 
can  spin  a  better  yarn  for  a  dull  journey  (even  if 
he  has  never  given  us  a  Brushwood  Boy),  his 
particular  talent  is  about  as  at  home  among 


224          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

the  delicate  domesticities  of  his  "Duet  with  an 
Occasional  Chorus"  as  would  be  some  genial 
pugilist  with  the  "  Pot-pourri  of  a  Surrey  Garden." 
And  yet,  while  one  could  pile  up  examples  of  sad 
wreckage  upon  both  these  rocks,  the  wonder,  after 
all,  is  that  there  is  really  so  little  of  it. 

Mr.  Benson,  no  doubt,  will  put  up  his  helm  in 
time ;  and  Sir  Arthur  has  been  wise  enough,  as 
far  as  I  know,  to  avoid  any  further  emulation  of 
Mrs.  Gaskell  and  Miss  Mitf  ord.  But  it  is,  perhaps, 
to  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  that  one  naturally  seems  to 
turn  for  a  demonstration  of  the  completely  median 
course — so  rigidly  median  indeed,  in  its  lofty 
mediocrity,  that  I  am  sometimes  at  a  loss  to 
account  for  her  very  great  popularity  even  among 
(as  the  critics  have  called  it)  the  circulating- 
library  public.  For  though  she  has  a  gift,  and 
a  very  considerable  one,  for  bringing  together 
the  materials — a  little  machine-made,  perhaps — 
of  dramatic  incident,  one  may  search  her  books 
in  vain  for  a  single  thrill  that  they  have  produced ; 
while  of  humour  they  contain  not  a  semblance. 
Indeed  they  form,  as  it  seems  to  me,  a  long  series 
of  admirably  well-laid  fires,  for  which  only  the 
matches  are  wanting.  As  Dr.  Brown  would  have 
said,  she  is  the  Maker,  not  the  Mother,  of  her 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  225 

books.  And  I  think  hers  must  be  the  twentieth- 
century  triumph  of  the  college-bred  lady  inspector. 
It's  strange  how  increasingly  one  misses,  when 
it  is  absent,  this  underlying  sense  of  humour ;  so 
much  so  indeed  that  one  perceives  it  more  and 
more  to  be  a  sine  qua  non  of  all  towering  and 
durable  achievement.  Given  Meredith's  humour, 
how  Hardy,  with  his  first-hand  observation,  his 
extraordinary  detachment,  and  the  beautiful 
lucidity  of  his  English,  would  have  loomed  above 
the  creator  of  Sir  Willoughby.  With  humour 
for  its  lightning,  how  Tess  would  have  stricken  us 
to  the  heart.  And  how  poor  a  substitute  for  it 
is  irony,  howsoever  its  subjects  may  deserve  it. 
To  withstand  the  years  it  must,  no  doubt,  sur- 
round itself  with  the  stronger  qualities — depth 
and  simplicity  and  desire — or  Barrie,  least  of  the 
Immortals,  would  be  among  their  giants ;  and 
Jacobs  would  be  knocking  at  their  door.  But 
that  Olympus  demands  it  let  all  testify  who  have 
tried  to  love  Sordello,  or  watched  Jude  fade 
ever  deeper  into  his  obscurity,  or  read  again,  a 
generation  later,  the  rhapsodies  of  Inglesant 
and  Elsmere.  There  are  a  few  exceptions  of 
course,  chiefly,  I  think,  in  the  sphere  of  the 
short  story,  the  mere  conte,  and  among  the 
poets,  of  whom  perhaps  Wordsworth  is  the  one 


226          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

that  springs  most  readily  to  the  mind.  By  the 
way,  I  saw  a  discussion  (a  rather  unkindly  one) 
in  one  of  the  magazines,  a  year  or  two  ago,  as 
to  the  worst  line  in  reputable  poetry,  and  I  am 
rather  afraid  that  last  Sunday  I  discovered  it, 
and  that  Wordsworth  must  be  regarded  as  its 
sponsor.  Here  it  is,  and  one  grain  of  humour 
would  surely  have  made  it  impossible. 

Spade !  with  which  Wilkinson  has  tilled  his  land. 

And  yet  he  has  written  a  sonnet  or  two,  and  at 
least  one  ode,  that  are  as  immortal,  I  suppose,  as 
anything  in  letters. 

But  I  don't  seem  to  have  told  you  very  much 
about  my  bedside  books.  And  the  truth  of  it  is 
that  "  Daisy's  Aunt "  is  the  only  title  that  I  can 
remember,  though  it  may  conveniently  be 
stretched,  perhaps,  to  embrace  them  all.  For  it 
concluded,  if  I  remember  rightly,  with  the 
matrimony  of  four  persons ;  and  the  others  also 
are  now  a  blur  to  me  of  ultimate  marriages — 
marriages  between  pathological  pianists  and 
high-born,  introspective  damsels ;  and  marriages 
between  athletic  young  gentlemen,  good  at 
puncture-mending,  and  the  distressed  maidens 
whose  tyres  had  become  deflated. 

Of  the  books,  on  the  other  hand,  that  have 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  227 

made  me  read  them — rare  and  beloved  visitors — 
there  have  been  fewer  this  year  than  usual, 
though  it  is  I,  and  not  the  books,  that  must  bear 
the  chief  blame  for  this.  The  two  latest  of  these, 
separated  by  an  interval  of  months,  and  both, 
I  believe,  already  elderly  as  the  lives  of  modern 
novels  go,  are  "  The  Cliff  End"  and  "Captain 
Margaret."  The  first  of  these  delighted  me  from 
cover  to  cover,  in  spite  of  some  exaggerations  of 
character-drawing  and  dialogue  ;  and  I  reverently 
bow  my  head  to  its  author  as  having  made 
himself  at  a  bound  the  laureate,  not  only  of  the 
bath-tub,  but  of  that  peculiarly  distressing 
variety  of  it  that  is  very  wide  and  shallow, 
with  a  dimple  in  it  that  cracks  when  you  stand 
upon  it,  and  a  capacity  for  water  that  no  house- 
maid has  ever  satisfied.  It  is  perhaps  too  late  for 
the  nature  of  this  vessel  to  change.  But  never 
more,  with  that  rosy  vision  of  sponging  maiden- 
hood before  my  eyes,  shall  I  regard  it  as  anything 
but  blessed. 

So  it's  a  book  for  which  I  should  like  to  prophesy 
life,  though  with  less  certainty,  perhaps,  than 
"  Captain  Margaret,"  upon  the  deck  of  his 
Broken  Heart,  carries  the  very  germ  of  it  in  his 
delicate  hands.  For  to  his  eldorado  of  dreams 
we  have  all  of  us,  at  one  time  or  another,  turned 


228         The  Corner  of  Har/ey  Street 

our  eyes.  And  in  his  schooner  might  have  sailed 
any  Quixote  of  history,  lucky  indeed  to  find  a 
Cammock  for  his  navigator. 

And  yet  who  am  I  to  be  thus  prophesying  so 
boldly  ?  For  the  third  of  my  books  has  been  a 
collection  of  Oscar  Wilde's  contributions  to  the 
"  Pall  Mall  Gazette,"  full  of  such  forecasts,  and 
written,  too,  by  a  practised  hand.  Has  one  half 
of  them  been  verified  ?  I  think  not.  And  yet  I 
suspect  that  few  critics  could  more  equably 
confront  a  reprinting  of  their  twenty-year-old 
opinions.  Looking  through  this  book,  I  read,  for 
example,  whole  pages  devoted  to  the  novel  of 
Miss  So-and-so  whom  one  would  have  supposed, 
in  the  eighties,  to  have  been  an  emerging  George 
Eliot.  And  how  desperately  must  the  praise 
have  fired  her  to  further  efforts.  Yet  what,  in 
1910,  has  become  of  poor  Miss  So-and-so ; 
and  where  are  those  great  works  that  were  so 
certainly  to  be  ?  There  is  the  writer  himself  too, 
so  young  then,  with  his  brilliant  flippancies — 
his  impeachment  of  the  British  Cook,  for  in- 
stance, with  her  passion  for  combining  pepper 
and  gravy  and  calling  it  soup,  and  her  inveterate 
habit  of  sending  up  bread  poultices  with  pheasant 
• — and  all  his  promises  of  grace. 

So,  upon  the  whole,  it's  a  sad  book ;  and  here, 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  229 

for  a  brisker  comment  upon  all  that  I  have  been 
writing,  comes  a  volume  of  American  essays 
that  has  just  been  lent  to  Esther,  wherein  I  am 
positively  assured  that  the  volumes  of  Mrs. 
Humphry  Ward  are  quite  dangerously  immoral ! 
While  there,  upon  a  chair,  lies  a  novel,  "  Mr. 
Meeson's  Will,"  that  Rupert  Morris  has  just 
recommended  to  me  as  being  his  beau-ideal  of  a 
really  outstanding  story.  So  let  me  lie  low.  I  have 
spoken  out  my  literary  heart  to  you,  as  any  man,  on 
occasion,  should  have  the  courage  to  do.  But 
now  let  me  lie  low.  For  by  what  standards  am  I 
judging,  after  all,  w7ho  have  only  spent  an  hour 
in  Chicago,  and  never  a  moment  east  of  Suez  ? 

You  will  remember  Morris,  whom  you  met 
here  during  his  last  visit  to  England.  And  as  you 
remember  him  so  he  is,  with  perhaps  an  added 
grey  hair  or  two  in  his  moustache,  and  a  few 
more  upon  his  temples.  For  the  rest,  he  is  just 
as  lean  and  brown  and  boyish  as  he  has  always 
been,  and  with  a  touch  of  deference  in  his  first 
greetings  to  Esther  and  me  that  has  survived 
from  the  school-days,  when  he  was  a  com- 
parative nipper,  and  that  he  will  carry,  I 
suppose,  since  he  is  English  of  the  English,  until 
common  earth  shall  level  us  all.  He  was  looking, 
when  he  first  came  in,  rather  hesitating  and  ill 


230         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

at  ease,  with  his  title,  as  it  were,  tucked  awkwardly 
under  his  arm.  Much  like  this  I  have  seen  him  at 
school,  on  some  Old  Boys'  Day,  coming  back 
to  the  pavilion  after  making  his  century,  with 
an  uncomfortable  shove  at  his  cap,  and  some- 
thing about  the  bowlers  having  been  "  dead  off 
their  luck." 

Finding  us  alone  however,  and  not  disposed 
to  worry  him,  he  cheered  up  amazingly,  and 
was  soon  chattering  to  us  briskly  about  his  various 
adventures.  His  personal  part  in  these  would  seem 
as  a  rule  to  have  been  conspicuous  by  its  dullness ; 
but  the  adventures  themselves  were  well  worth 
hearing  about.  And  it  was  only  quite  acciden- 
tally, as  he  was  leaving  for  Stoke,  that  we  dis- 
covered him  to  be  seconded  for  some  special 
duties  in  the  colonies — "  imperial  defence,  don't 
you  know,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing ;  rather 
an  interesting  job." 

And  did  I  tell  you,  by  the  way,  that  the  Poles 
have  bequeathed  us  their  baby  during  their  visit 
to  Italy  ?  Esther  has  just  brought  her  in,  and 
she  is  staring  at  me  now  with  the  solemnest  eyes 
in  creation — little  pools  of  Siloam,  but  with  the 
angels  just  going  to  be  busy.  I  must  go  to  them, 
and  be  healed. 

Ever  yrs., 
P.  H. 


XXVI 

To  John  Summers,  M.B.,  c/o  the  Rev.  W.  B.  La 
louche.  High  Barn,  Winchester, 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

October  18,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  JACK, 

I  have  just  received  your  letter,  and  also  the 
accountant's  statement  as  regards  Dr.  Singleton's 
books ;  and  I  have  instructed  the  solicitors  to 
sell  out  enough  of  your  stock  to  buy  the  quarter- 
share  of  his  practice  upon  which  you  and  he 
have  agreed.  If  you  can  manage  to  obtain  with 
it  an  equal  proportion  of  his  skill,  kindliness, 
and  cheerful  adequacy  you  may  be  quite  sure 
that  the  advantage  of  the  bargain  will  not  be 
altogether  upon  his  side.  For  though  books  are 
important  of  course,  if  the  man  who  keeps  them 
is  sound  you  needn't  trouble  your  head  so  very 
much  about  them.  And  Singleton  is  sound 
through  and  through — not  exactly  one  of  those 
brilliant  men,  perhaps,  of  whom,  as  operating 
surgeons,  Sir  Frederick  Treves  has  declared  him- 

231 


232         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

self  to  be  so  justly  timid,  but  what  is  far 
better,  one  of  those  level-headed,  big-hearted 
general  practitioners,  tender  of  hand  and  es- 
sentially careful,  in  whose  professional  history 
mistakes  have  been,  and  will  continue  to  be, 
practically  unknown. 

Moreover  he  was  never,  even  as  a  student,  one 
of  those  people  who  have  set  out  to  purchase 
skill  in  their  own  profession  by  the  sacrifice  of 
very  nearly  every  other  human  interest.  Nihil 
bumani  a  me  alienum  puto  has  been  his  own  as 
well  as  his  hospital's  motto.  And  you  must  some 
day  get  him  to  tell  you  the  story  of  how  an 
odd  little  insight  into  esoteric  Buddhism  that 
he  was  once  curious  enough  to  obtain  became  the 
means  of  saving  the  life,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
sanity,  of  one  of  the  most  valuable  men  of  our 
time.  That  late  cut  of  his,  too,  is  still  well  worth 
seeing ;  and  there  are  not  many  of  my  friends 
who  can  go  straighter  to  the  heart  of  a  book  or  a 
picture — that  is,  if  the  book  or  the  picture  has  a 
heart  to  be  got  to. 

He  may  not  be  able  to  excise  a  Gasserian 
ganglion,  or  know  very  much  about  the  re- 
searches of  Calmette  or  von  Pircquet.  But  he 
knows  precisely  when  to  call  in  the  men  who  do. 
And  he's  just  the  sort  of  assistant  with  whom  they 


To  "John  Summer •/,  M.B.  233 

feel  safe  in  setting  out  to  work.  While,  on  the 
other  hand,  upon  a  hundred  points — little  every- 
day problems  of  medical  practice,  unclassified 
ailments  that  have  never  got  into  the  text-books  or 
been  dignified  with  a  Latin  name,  doubtful 
beginnings  of  more  definite  illnesses,  their  home- 
treatment,  and  the  adequate  settlement  of  the 
domestic  problems  that  they  involve — there  isn't 
a  man  in  Harley  Street  who  could  give  a  more 
valuable  opinion.  And  he  has  performed  a 
tracheotomy  with  his  pocket-knife  and  a  hair- 
pin, five  miles  from  anywhere,  in  the  heart  of  the 
Hampshire  downs. 

Such  men  are  not  only  the  pillars  of  our  pro- 
fession, but  its  topmost  pinnacles,  even  if  the 
wreaths  and  the  knighthoods  but  seldom  come 
their  way.  I  am  saying  all  this  because  I  think 
that  I  can  detect  in  your  letter,  and  certainly 
in  the  newer  generation  of  qualifying  students,  a 
kind  of  reluctance  about  going  into  general 
practice,  as  if  this  were  in  a  way  an  admission  of 
failure,  a  sort  of  dernier  ressort.  Whereas  of 
course  there  is  no  point  of  view  from  which  such 
a  way  of  looking  at  it  is  at  all  justifiable.  General 
practice  is  at  least  as  difficult,  if  it  is  to  be  carried 
on  well  and  successfully,  as  any  special  practice 
can  be,  and  probably  more  so;  for  the  G.P. 


234         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

has  to  live  continually,  as  it  were,  with  the 
results  of  his  handiwork.  He  is  always  liable  to 
meet  his  failures  round  the  next  corner ;  and 
his  mistakes  may  quite  easily  rent  the  pew 
behind  him  in  the  parish  church.  The  con- 
sultant, on  the  other  hand,  comes  into  the  family 
life  from  afar,  and  returns  again,  an  hour  or 
two  later,  to  the  seclusion  of  his  private  fastness. 
He  has  brought  down  his  little  bit  of  extra 
technical  skill  or  knowledge.  He  has  used  it 
for  good  or  ill.  And  the  results  do  not  follow 
him,  save  indirectly,  and  at  a  very  comfort- 
able distance.  But  the  G.P.  who  has  taken 
upon  himself  the  responsibility  of  calling  him 
in  must  needs  still  bear  upon  his  shoulders  not 
only  the  anxiety  that  heralds  ultimate  success, 
but  a  large  share  of  the  possible  obloquy  that 
may  follow  failure. 

Moreover,  in  all  the  hundred  extraneous 
interests  that  are  involved,  his  advice  becomes 
of  paramount  importance.  This  would  be  the 
best  room  for  the  patient  from  the  point  of 
view  of  quietness  and  aspect.  But  that,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  the  room  that  he  has  been  used  to. 
His  favourite  books  and  pictures  surround  him 
there  in  the  old  accustomed  order.  Does  the 
doctor  think  it  better  for  him  to  be  moved  ? 


To  'John  Summers,  M.B.  235 

His  wife,  his  mother,  or  his  sister  are  anxious  to 
nurse  him.  Are  they  strong  enough  or  skilful 
enough  ?  What  is  the  doctor's  opinion  on  this 
point  ?  Here  is  a  telephone  message  from  the 
office.  A  disturbing  point  has  arisen  in  the 
conduct  of  a  great  business,  and  should  be 
dealt  with  promptly.  Are  we  to  worry  the 
patient  with  it  now,  or  postpone  the  settlement, 
with  the  possibilities  of  greater  anxieties  later 
on  ?  Let  us  wait,  at  any  rate,  until  the  doctor 
comes. 

And  from  this  household  he  has  to  drive  home 
by  a  private  school  where  lies  some  boy  with  a 
cheerful  countenance  and  a  suspicious  red  rash  on 
his  chest.  It  would  never  do  to  create  a  false 
alarm.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  would  be 
more  than  disastrous  to  let  the  origin  of  some 
sweeping  epidemic  go  free  for  convenience'  sake. 
And  here  is  a  servant-maid  in  the  surgery  with  a 
throat  that  looks  as  diphtheritic  as  a  throat  can 
well  be ;  and  she  comes  from  a  dairy  farm  that 
supplies  half  the  town  with  milk,  under  the 
eyes  of  a  government  inspector ;  while  the 
rector's  wife,  nervous,  and  uncomfortably  near 
forty,  is  expecting  her  first,  long-looked-for  baby 
some  time  this  afternoon. 

It  may  take  a  good  man  to  remove  successfully 


236         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

an  adherent  appendix  or  an  obscure  tumour  of 
the  brain,  or  to  diagnose  some  out-of-the-way 
lesion  of  a  heart  valve.  But  such  a  man,  after 
all,  has  spent  the  greater  portion  of  his  pro- 
fessional life  in  dealing  with  no  other  subjects 
but  these.  And  it  must  surely  require  at 
least  an  equal  equipment,  after  its  own  kind, 
to  deal  wisely  and  rapidly  with  such  variously 
conflicting  problems  as  I  have  just  been  des- 
cribing. 

You  are  probably  becoming  a  little  bored  by 
these  commonplace  remarks  of  mine.  But  they 
are  the  sort  of  truism  that  will  generally  bear  an 
occasional  reconsideration.  And  if  I  have  a 
very  private  opinion,  to  which  you  cannot 
subscribe,  that  the  really  able  general  practitioner 
is  perhaps  the  very  best  man  in  our  ranks  bar 
none,  I  am  quite  willing  to  concede  this  extra 
superiority  if  you  will  grant  him  at  least  an  equal 
eminence  to  that  of  Sir  Grosvenor  le  Draughte, 
as  Mr.  Russell  has  called  him  in  one  of  his  recent 
books. 

So  go  into  your  practice  with  a  good  heart. 
Your  experience  as  a  locum  in  Bristol  and 
Shropshire  will  have  prepared  you  for  any  little 
mortifications  that  may  be  in  waiting  during 
your  first  few  months.  You  will  be  used  to  the 


To  yobn  Summers,  M.B.  237 

disheartening  fall  of  the  countenance  that  greets 
the  junior  partner  when  his  senior  was  expected. 
And  you  will  accept  with  a  grave  countenance 
and  an  inward  chuckle  your  knowledge  of  the 
extremely  frank  criticism  that  is  likely  to  herald 
and  succeed  your  first  few  visits.  Even  now  there's 
a  letter  upon  my  desk  from  a  disrespectful  young 
lady  who  shall  be  nameless.  A  new  curate  has 
made  his  initial  appearance  in  an  Eastbourne 
drawing-room.  "  He  shook  hands  just  like  a 
baby,"  she  writes,  "  and  he  stopped  to  tea, 
and  he  sprawled  all  over  the  table,  and  he  has 
quite  nice  eyes,  but  his  mouth  is  just  like  cook's 
when  she's  having  one  of  her  windy  spasums." 
And  if  sixteen  can  rise  to  heights  like  this, 
what  about  eighteen  and  twenty  and  twenty- 
two  ?  Nor  are  curates,  alas,  the  only  legitimate 
prey.  I  wonder  if  there's  a  girls'  school  in  your 
practice  ? 

You  may  lament  too,  for  a  little  while  perhaps, 
the  slow  dawning  of  confidence  in  your  new 
patients.  But  before  very  long  you  may  even  be 
rather  overwhelmed  (quite  privately  of  course) 
by  the  freedom  and  completeness  with  which 
it  is  accorded  you.  And  above  all  things,  be 
just  your  natural  self  in  dealing  with  them, 
forgetting,  if  you  can,  that  you  have  ever  even 


238         The   Corner  of  Harley  Street 

heard  of  such  an  attribute  as  a  good  bedside 
manner. 

This  reminds  me  that  only  last  week,  in  a  rail- 
way carriage,  I  overheard  two  young  ladies 
discussing  a  very  sympathetic  physician  well 
known  to  us  both.  One  of  them  was  wondering 
why  he  had  always  been  so  successful.  "Oh, 
that,"  said  the  other  cheerfully,  "  is  because  he's 
so  frightfully  good  at  comforting  the  relatives 
— afterwards,  you  know." 

If  your  news  must  be  bad,  tell  it  soberly  and 
promptly.  It's  seldom — very  seldom — wise  to 
conceal  it  for  some  dubious  temporary  benefit. 
A.nd  if  you  are  in  doubt  about  any  of  their 
maladies  let  them  know  it  quite  frankly,  ex- 
plaining to  them  in  language  suited  to  their  degree 
of  education  and  intelligence  exactly  why  this 
should  be  the  case. 

There's  been  a  good  deal  written  lately  about 
the  personal  factor  in  treatment,  the  Psychology 
of  the  Physician,  and  the  mental  therapeutics 
at  his  command.  And  I  even  saw  a  letter  in  the 
"  Lancet,"  a  few  weeks  ago,  urging  that  the  prac- 
tical application  of  Personality  in  the  sick-room 
should  form  one  of  the  recognised  subjects  of 
the  medical  curriculum.  But  in  the  first  place, 
I'm  exceedingly  doubtful  if  the  modesty  of  our 


To  'John  Summers,  M.B.  239 

profession  is  so  excessively  marked  as  to  demand 
for  its  correction  a  course  of  instruction  in  the 
conscious  prescribing  of  its  own  personality.  And 
in  the  second,  I  fail  to  see  how  this  latter  could 
ever  be  done  without,  by  the  very  act,  con- 
siderably altering  that  uncertain  quantity,  at 
any  rate  so  far  as  its  victim  was  concerned. 
And  what  would  one's  ego  be  like,  I  wonder, 
after  ten  years'  conscientious  labour  ?  So  I 
shouldn't  worry  too  much  about  your  personality 
if  I  were  you.  It  will  be  a  good  thing,  no  doubt, 
to  get  all  you  can  into  it  by  encouraging  such 
tentacles  as  it  may  put  forth  to  the  sun  and  the 
breeze.  But  what  other  people  are  to  get  out 
of  it  is  a  matter  with  which  you  may  quite 
properly,  I  think,  be  too  busy  to  concern  your- 
self. 

While  I'm  still  in  the  pulpit,  let  me  recommend 
you  to  husband  your  energies.  Don't  play 
tennis  all  the  afternoon  (even  with  Amaryllis) 
if  you  have  been  up  all  night.  Go  to  sleep  in  the 
hammock,  instead,  over  a  book  or  a  paper  or  a 
letter  from  Uncle  Peter.  And  don't  forget 
sometimes  to  say  your  prayers.  For  whatever 
may  be  one's  private  notions  as  to  their  ultimate 
Destination ;  whether  one  affects  a  belief  in 
some  beneficent  Overlord,  once  incarnate ;  or 


240         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

regards  God  as  the  ever-growing  sum  of  all 
higher  human  volitions ;  or,  remembering  this 
infinitesimal  particle  of  earth  in  the  greatness 
of  the  universe,  considers  such  a  conception 
to  be  inadequate  ;  or  admits  only  some  possible 
Starting-point,  a  kind  of  Divine  Convenience 
upon  which  to  found  theories ;  or  has  never 
thought  about  the  matter  at  all — it's  always  a 
gracious  and  comforting  act  to  remove  one's 
moral  hat,  as  it  were  (even  if  reverence  goes  no 
further)  to  Something  at  any  rate  bigger  than 
most  of  us.  While  even  on  the  very  chilliest  of 
auto-suggestion  grounds  there  is  still  a  word  to 
be  said  for  it  as  a  vehicle  wherein  to  despatch 
one's  extra  troubles  to  some  handy  mental 
cemetery.  For  prayer,  whether  we  look  upon  it 
as  sacred  or  superstitious,  must  still,  as  the 
hymn  says,  be  the  soul's  sincere  desire,  uttered  or 
unexpressed.  And  occasional  expression  is  about 
as  valuable  a  prelude  to  the  acquiring  of  know- 
ledge as  any  that  are  going. 

So  I  may  as  well  tell  you  at  once  that  I  know 
nothing  whatever  about  motor-cars,  and  therefore 
find  the  last  half  of  your  letter  entirely  unin- 
telligible. But  I  gather  that  the  one  you  mean  to 
purchase  combines  speed,  silence,  and  freedom 
from  odour  in  a  quite  unusual  degree.  Some  day, 


To  yobn  Summer 'j,  M.B.  241 

no  doubt,  I  shall  be  sponging  upon  you  for  a 
lesson  in  driving  it — or  him — or  do  you  call  the 
thing  her  ? 

Yr.  affect,  uncle, 

PETER  HARDING. 


XXVII 

To  Miss  Sarah  Harding,  The  Orphanage,  Little 
Blessington,  Dorset. 

918  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

November  7,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  SALLY, 

This  is  going  to  be  a  short  letter  because 
the  news  that  it  contains  is  probably  speeding 
to  you  already — from  Esther,  to  whom  its 
greatness  is  not  unmixed  with  tears  ;  and  from 
Molly,  to  whom  its  joy  is  of  the  eternal  gold. 
Ten  days  ago  she  came  back  to  us  from  Stoke, 
where,  as  she  told  us,  she  had  been  having  a  good 
time,  but  seemed  now  to  have  fulfilled  her  little 
contract.  For  the  house-party  had  broken  up : 
Horace  had  long  ago  made  a  late  return  to 
Cambridge;  Carthew  was  in  the  Temple,  and 
Pole  in  Fleet  Street ;  Hilary  and  Norah  were  off 
to  Spain;  and  the  one  or  two  extra  guns,  just 
leisurely  shooting  men,  had  betaken  themselves, 
at  any  rate  superficially  regretful,  to  other  people's 
houses.  Lady  Wroxton  was  better — very  nearly 
her  old  self,  and  for  the  moment  wrapped  up, 

242 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  243 

heart  and  soul,  in  her  nephew  Rupert.  It  had 
been  a  pleasant  visit.  She  kissed  us  very  tenderly. 
And  now  it  was  high  time  that  she  was  back 
again  among  her  girls  at  Hoxton. 

Two  days  later  came  a  wire  from  Rupert  asking 
if  he  might  spend  a  night  with  us  on  his  way  to 
Yorkshire.  And  in  the  evening  he  duly  arrived. 
Nobody  else  was  dining  with  us  that  night, 
and  our  little  party  at  the  table  was  perhaps 
quieter  than  usual.  After  dinner  we  were  going 
to  smoke  our  pipes  in  the  library  with  Esther 
and  Molly,  when  Rupert  drew  me  aside  and 
asked  me  to  take  him  into  the  consulting- 
room. 

"  I  want  you  just  to  run  over  me,"  he  said, 
with  his  eyes  on  a  dangling  stethoscope,  "  to  run 
over  me  rather  thoroughly." 

I  glanced  at  him  anxiously.  But  in  his  evening 
clothes  he  seemed  even  lither  and  more  bronzed 
than  ever. 

"  Feeling  bad  anywhere  ?  "  I  inquired.  But 
he  shook  his  head. 

"  Rather  fit,"  he  admitted,  as  he  took  off  his 
coat  and  waistcoat.  And  as  I  suspected,  I  could 
find  nothing  wrong  with  him.  On  the  contrary, 
he  appeared  to  be  in  the  very  pink  of  condition, 
for  all  his  tropical  sojournings. 


244         T&e  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

"  Good,"  he  said  ;  "  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
I  saw  Manson  this  morning,  and  West  this 
afternoon,  and  they  both  told  me  the  same 
thing." 

I  began  to  laugh  at  him,  though  he  was  speak- 
ing very  seriously.  "  You're  surely  not  becoming 
a  hypochondriac  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  No,"  he  said  gravely ;  "  I  don't  think  so. 
But  I'm  forty-seven,  you  see.  And  I  want  to 
get  married." 

I  was,  perhaps,  rather  taken  aback  at  this, 
though  I  scarcely  knew  why.  And  he  himself 
appeared  to  consider  the  idea  as  savouring  some- 
what of  presumption.  For  he  blushed  a  little 
as  he  slowly  collected  his  clothes.  Somehow  we 
had  neither  of  us  thought  of  him  as  being  a 
marrying  man.  Then,  as  he  began  to  dress  him- 
self again,  I  congratulated  him,  and  asked  him 
if  the  lady  was  known  to  me.  He  hesitated  for  a 
moment,  and  then  smiled. 

"  Yes,  I  think  she  is,"  he  said  ;  "  though  I 
doubt  if  you'd  consider  me  much  of  a  husband 
for  her." 

He  filled  his  pipe  thoughtfully. 

"  For  though  in  some  ways  she  seems  to  me 
to  be  rather  old  for  her  years — old-fashioned, 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  245 

you  know,  and  womanly,  and  all  that — she's 
really  rather  young." 

He  seemed  to  consider  this  a  difficulty.  Then 
he  looked  at  me  with  a  kind  of  deprecating 
straightness. 

"  You'd  be  giving  her,"  he  said,  "  to  a  fellow 
who's  old  enough  to  be  her  father." 

I  suppose  that  I  looked  a  little  surprised. 

"  Yes,  I  do,"  he  said  humbly ;  "  I  mean 
Molly." 

We  sucked  our  pipes  in  silence  for  a  minute  or 
two,  looking  at  one  another  through  the  tobacco 
smoke.  Then  I  asked  him  if  he  had  ever  pointed 
out  to  Molly  her  striking  lack  of  modernity.  He 
shook  his  head. 

"  Hadn't  the  pluck,"  he  confessed  ;  "  but  it's 
so  obvious,  isn't  it  ?  " 

He  glanced  at  me  anxiously. 

"  But  you  mustn't  think  I'm  against  it,"  he 
said.  "  It's  so  rare  nowadays.  And  I  think  it's 
beautiful ;  and  anyway,  it's  just  what  I've  been 
wanting  all  my  life." 

"  You'll  let  me  talk  to  Esther  ?  "  I  asked 
presently. 

"  I  should  like  to  talk  to  her  myself,"  he 
answered,  "  only  I'm  such  a  fool  at  these 
things." 


246         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

He  lit  another  match. 

"  Look  here,"  he  went  on,  "  I  don't  want  you 
to  tell  me  what  you  both  think  for  a  week — till 
I  come  back  from  Yorkshire.  I'm  too  old  for 
her,  I  know.  But  I  seem  to  be  pretty  sound,  and 
I — well,  dash  it  all,  Peter,  you  know  her  better 
than  I  do,  although  you — d'you  know,  by  the 
way,  that  you  rather  put  me  off  her  in  that  last 
letter  of  yours  ?  " 

"  Did  I  ?  "  I  asked.  "  Perhaps  that  was  be- 
cause I  don't  really  know  her  so  well." 

"  Well,  first,"  he  said,  "  there  was  that  Lynn 
affair,  of  course.  But  that's  dead,  isn't  it  ?  " 

"  Quite,"  I  told  him ;  "  and  they've  both 
gone  out  of  mourning." 

"  And  then,"  he  went  on,  "  you  made  me 
think  of  a  rather  up-to-date  young  woman,  quite 
nice,  of  course,"  he  looked  at  me  apologetically, 
"  but  perhaps  just  a  little  bit  self-complacent. 
Whereas  I  found  in  her,  instead,  everything  that 
I've  always  worshipped  most,  you  know — from 
rather  a  long  way  off." 


That  was  a  week  ago.  And  since  he  left,  as 
you  will  imagine,  both  Esther  and  I  have  done  a 
good  deal  of  thinking.  For  on  the  one  side  we 


To  Miss  Sarah  Harding  247 

couldn't  help  feeling  the  absurdity  of  regarding 
Rupert  as  a  son-in-law.  And  on  the  other  we 
should  be  giving  our  daughter — or  rather  watch- 
ing her  go — into  the  hands  of  one  of  our  oldest 
friends.  Given  love  too,  how  well  should  they 
be  mated  ;  both  so  strong,  but  he  so  abidingly 
simple,  so  unchallenged  by  surrounding  mysteries, 
and  she  so  eager,  so  delicately  tuned  to  each 
passing  subtlety  of  thought. 

Characteristically  enough,  he  had  neither  told 
us,  before  he  went,  how  clearly  he  had  shown 
Molly  his  feelings,  nor  asked  us  to  discuss  with 
her,  or  to  withhold,  his  announcement  to  our- 
selves. And  so  we  said  nothing  to  her  about  it. 
But  just  now,  as  we  were  expecting  his  arrival,  I 
discovered,  I  think,  that  our  desire  for  her  had 
been  fulfilled.  For  with  a  shyness  bringing  back 
to  me  a  little  girl  that  I  had  forgotten,  she  had 
perched  herself  on  the  arm  of  my  chair  ;  so  that 
when  his  voice  was  in  the  hall  there  wasn't  very 
far  to  bend. 

"  You  told  me  to  wait  for  Heaven,  you  know," 
she  reminded  me.  And  her  eyes  confessed  that 
it  was  standing  at  the  door. 

Your  affect,  brother, 

PETER. 


248         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

P.S. — I  can  see  you  pursing  those  wise  lips  of 
yours,  and  muttering  that  Heaven  has  been  a 
little  sudden.  But  I  believe  that  there  are 
precedents  for  this. 


XXVIII 

To  Miss  Josephine  Summers,  The  Cottage, 
Potbam,  Beds. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

November  26,  1910. 

MY  DEAR  AUNT  JOSEPHINE, 

We  shall  be  very  disappointed  if  you  don't 
come  to  Molly's  wedding,  although  it  is  to  be 
rather  a  quiet  one,  or  at  any  rate  as  quiet  as  we 
can  manage  to  keep  it — not  because  we  are  any- 
thing but  desirous  that  as  many  people  as  are 
kind  enough  to  do  so  may  rejoice  with  us  over 
the  occasion  ;  but  because,  from  Molly  down- 
wards, we  have  a  temperamental  shrinking  from 
crowded  churches,  pavement  druggets,  hired 
exotics,  and  paid  choir-boys.  And  you  mustn't 
worry  because  your  favourite  porter  has  been 
transferred  to  Leeds,  and  therefore  won't  be 
able  to  look  after  your  luggage  at  St.  Pancras. 
Because  one  of  us  will  be  sure  to  meet  you  with 
the  carnage,  and  escort  both  you  and  it  quite 
safely  to  Harley  Street. 

249 


250         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

I  have  received  your  cheque,  and  will  buy 
the  little  medicine-chest  for  Rupert  to-morrow. 
As  you  say,  it's  most  important  that  the  bread- 
winner should  try  to  keep  himself  in  as  good  a 
state  of  health  as  possible,  even  if  he  is  so  liable, 
as  Rupert  is,  to  be  suddenly  shot.  And  we  all 
think  the  old  bracelet  that  you  have  sent  to  Molly 
very  beautiful.  Both  of  them  will  so  much  want 
to  thank  you  personally  for  your  gifts  that  you 
must  really  make  up  your  mind,  I  think,  to  take 
the  risks  of  the  journey  (the  most  recent  statistics 
show  these  to  be  quite  small)  and  stay  with  us 
here  for  a  couple  of  nights  from  December  6th. 
Yr.  affect,  nephew, 

PETER  HARDING. 


XXIX 

To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding,  S.  Peter's  College, 
Morecambe  Bay. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

December  2,  1910. 
MY  DEAR  BRUCE, 

It  was  very  good  of  you  to  enclose  a  note 
in  your  letter  to  Molly,  and  the  more  so  because 
I  have  an  uncomfortable  suspicion  that  I  may 
have  wounded  you  a  little  when  I  wrote  to  you 
last.  If  only  we  could  use  colours  now,  to  ex- 
press our  deeper  attitude  on  these  occasions — 
as  some  of  your  fellowr-clergy  wear  stoles  at  cer- 
tain seasons — with  what  pleasant  impunity  could 
we  write  to  one  another  in  yellow,  or  purple, 
or  red,  leaving  black  for  the  editor  of  "  The 
Times,"  or  the  plumber  whose  bill  we're  dis- 
puting. But,  alas,  even  our  lightest  thoughts 
must  needs  go  forth  clad  like  mutes  at  a  funeral, 
and  dependent  upon  those  who  meet  them  to 
detect  their  forlorn  humanity.  And  so  if  I 
have  talked,  as  the  outsider  that  I  am,  too 
harshly  of  things  that  are  dear  to  you,  you 

251 


252         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

must  forgive  me  even  as  Merridew  has  forgiven 
Rogers. 

For  you  know — why  should  I  tell  you  ? — that 
it  was  no  Word  from  on  high  that  my  puny 
humanity  was  attempting  to  challenge,  but  only 
the  chains  (as  they  seem  to  me)  of  Its  ecclesias- 
tical exposition  ;  as  though  man  had  been  made 
for  the  Church,  and  not  the  Church  for  man. 
And  yet  even  thus  one  can  only  bow  before  its 
achievement.  For  to  be  able,  as  the  miner  of 
whom  we  read  the  other  day,  to  sing  "  Lead, 
kindly  Light "  through  the  foul  air  of  some 
blocked-up  coal-pit  is  better  than  to  have  all 
knowledge — and  an  abundant  justification  of  any 
creed  that  makes  it  possible. 

"  Thou  wouldst  not  seek  Me,"  says  the  Saviour 
in  the  "  Mirror  of  Jesus,"  "  if  thou  hadst  not 
found  Me." 

Do  you  know  the  quotation  ?  I  came  upon  it 
by  chance  the  other  day  as  repeated  by  Bourget 
in  a  book  that  I  happened  to  be  reading.  And 
it  seems  to  me  to  contain  very  simply — if  only 
we  might  give  it  something  more  than  an  academic 
consent — just  the  one  conception  that  is  needed 
for  the  true  and  permanent  sweetening  of  all  our 
religious  relationships.  For  they  are  seeking, 
these  pig-headed  people  who  annoy  us  so  much— 


To  the  Rev.  Bruce  Harding         253 

I  think  that,  nowadays,  we  most  of  us  can  admit 
as  much  as  that.  Methodist,  Sacerdotalist, 
Hyde-Park  Agnostic,  Christian  Socialist,  Roman 
Modernist,  Traditional  Romanist,  High,  Low, 
Broad,  Middle,  Open,  Closed  (I  wonder  if  God 
laughs  sometimes  at  our  resounding  definitions), 
or  Free  Lance — we  cannot  help  pitying  them,  of 
course,  according  to  our  several  lights ;  but  in  so 
far  as  their  sincerity  is  manifest,  we  do  behold  in 
them  the  signs  of  a  mistaken  search. 

And  yet,  by  that  very  fact,  have  they  not 
really  found  ?  Not  our  particular  little  glimpse 
of  the  Almighty  and  the  Eternal,  but  some  other 
little  glimpse — something,  at  any  rate,  that  is 
evidently  making  them  strive  for  more ;  and 
something  that  they,  like  we,  are  desperately 
anxious  to  share.  Or  why  these  dusts  of  con- 
flict ? 

And  yet,  perhaps,  the  dusts  are  inevitable,  after 
all — the  surest  sign  that  the  Building  grows  be- 
neath its  million  workers,  and  that  the  mallets 
and  chisels  are  being  busy  against  that  great 
day  of  Affirmation  when  the  Temple  shall 
stand  complete  at  the  meeting-place  of  all  our 
roads. 

And  meanwhile  Molly  and  Rupert,  at  any  rate, 
are  feeling  very  happy — with  a  proud  humility, 


254         T&e  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

carefully  concealed.  His  years  have  seldom 
weighed  heavily  on  Molly's  future  husband, 
though  as  a  matter  of  bald  fact  he  is  Mr.  Pick- 
wick's senior.  And  lately  he  has  been  dropping 
them  by  handfuls.  Molly,  however,  must  have 
picked  some  of  them  up,  I  fancy,  and  is  wearing 
them  with  an  appropriate  dignity. 

Your  affect,  cousin, 

PETER  HARDING. 


XXX 

To  Hugh  PontreX)  Villa  Rosa,  Mentone. 

91  B  HARLEY  STREET,  W., 

December  25,  1910, 

10.30  p.m. 
MY  DEAR  HUGH, 

This  seems  an  odd  sort  of  time  at  which  to 
begin  a  letter — even  to  you.  But  this  has  been 
an  odd  sort  of  Christmas,  a  kind  of  aftermath, 
as  far  as  its  festivities  have  been  concerned,  of 
those  demanded  by  Molly's  marriage.  The  two 
water-colours  that  you  sent  them,  by  the  way, 
were  both  lovely,  quite  in  your  happiest  vein  ; 
and  I  am  sorry  that  at  present  they  have  no 
permanent  wall  to  hang  them  on.  But  Rupert's 
colonial  tour,  upon  which  they  had  to  start  early 
last  week,  will  scarcely  be  finished,  I  suppose, 
for  twelve  months ;  and  even  then  their  place 
of  habitation  seems  likely  to  be  very  movable. 
So,  upon  the  whole,  we  have  been  a  quiet  little 
party,  or  as  quiet,  at  any  rate,  as  Claire  and  Tom 
will  allow  ;  and  we  decided  to  spend  the  after- 
noon at  the  hospital,  which  is  en  Jete  for  some 

255 


256         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

twenty-four  hours,  at  the  price,  possibly,  of  a  few 
subsequent  temperatures,  but  to  the  immediate 
benediction  of  all  concerned. 

Have  you  ever  been  to  the  hospital  ?  I  think 
not.  And  I  daren't  attempt  to  describe  it  to 
you,  chiefly,  I  suppose,  on  account  of  the  natural 
reticence,  the  mauvaise  honte,  or  the  golden 
silence — I  leave  you  to  select — with  which  most 
men  avoid  such  subjects  as  their  wives,  their 
souls,  and  their  alma  mater ;  but  secondarily 
because,  by  the  time  my  letter  reached  you,  the 
description  would  most  probably  have  ceased 
to  be  true.  It  would  have  added  a  storey,  or 
sprouted  a  wing.  Let  me  content  myself  there- 
fore with  pointing  out  to  you  those  two  boys 
standing  rather  awkwardly  in  one  corner  of  the 
entrance-hall — the  left-hand  corner  between  the 
cloak-room  and  the  porter's  desk.  Both  of  them 
have  only  just  left  school.  The  shiny-haired  one, 
with  the  crimson  tie,  and  the  gold  buttons  on  his 
waistcoat,  and  the  creases  on  his  rather  striking 
trousers,  was  at  one  of  our  older  foundations. 
The  other,  with  yesterday's  collar  round  his  neck, 
and  a  stain  or  two  of  nitric  acid  upon  his  sleeves, 
has  just  won  an  entrance  scholarship  from  a 
private  school  at  Camberwell.  The  second  is  the 
shyer  of  the  two  perhaps,  in  spite  of  his  ardent 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  257 

Fabianism  and  his  bitter  independence  of  revealed 
religion.  But  both  are  a  little  nervous  in  that 
they  are  only  in  their  first  year,  and  still,  academi- 
cally speaking,  confined  to  the  study  of  the  dog- 
fish in  a  remoter  corner  of  the  college.  They 
are  feeling  rather  young,  in  fact,  though  the 
hospital's  name  is  on  their  visiting  cards — 
something  like  new  boys  again,  at  the  bottom 
of  the  first  form. 

Three  Christmases  from  now,  however,  and 
they  will  be  sauntering  here  very  much  at  their 
ease,  waiting  about  with  their  house-physicians 
for  the  two  o'clock  arrival  of  their  chiefs  from 
Harley  Street.  The  gold  buttons  will  have  dis- 
appeared, I  think,  by  then,  and  the  trousers  will 
be  modester  in  hue  ;  while  on  the  other  hand 
that  collar  will  be  above  suspicion,  and  you 
might  search  in  vain  for  a  trace  of  red  corrosive. 
Both,  too,  will  be  dangling  stethoscopes,  and 
would  like,  if  they  were  quite  certain  of  the 
chairman,  to  be  smoking  a  Virginian  cigarette.  In 
other  words,  they  have  deserted  the  college  for 
the  "  house."  They  have  become  critics  of  the 
nursing  staff,  and  their  talk — not  on  Christmas 
Day,  of  course — is  of  rales  and  rhonchi  and 
the  merits  of  their  respective  H.P.'s.  There 
are  some  of  them  standing  about  in  the  hall 
a 


258         The  Corner  of  Har/ey  Street 

as  our  party  dismounts  from  the  carriage. 
But  the  majority  are  already  in  their  favourite 
wards,  whose  walls  they  have  been  helping  to 
decorate.  Far  removed  are  they  from  the 
Sawyers  of  yesterday,  though  at  times  they  grow 
merry  with  wine.  For  the  demands  of  examiners 
have  become  annually  more  stringent ;  their 
hospital  duties  are  arduous ;  and  hard  work,  as 
everybody  knows,  is  the  next-door  neighbour 
to  virtue. 

Give  them  but  three  Christmases  more,  and 
they  will  be  even  as  this  white-coated  and 
dignified  young  man  whom  Horace  and  I  are 
watching  as  he  deals  with  the  patients  in  the 
receiving-room.  For  these  will  drift  in  from 
the  streets  and  tenements,  whether  or  no  the  day 
be  a  Festival,  and  partly,  perhaps,  with  an  eye  to 
possible  good  cheer.  We  wait  a  little,  as  he 
stands  there  by  the  pillar,  a  curious  contrast, 
with  his  fresh  face  and  athletic  figure,  to  the 
slouching  fleshiness  of  these  big  navvies  and  the 
stunted  urbanity  of  the  rest. 

Behind  him  stand  a  couple  of  dressers,  fresh 
from  the  college,  willing,  but  still  perhaps  a 
little  bewildered,  and  to  whom  this  all-knowing 
and  self-possessed  young  surgeon  is  something 
of  a  god.  His  treatment  is  rapid — it  has  to  be — 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  259 

for  he  is  here  primarily  to  sort  out  the  cases 
that  come  crowding  in  their  daily  hundreds. 
But  he  must  never  make  a  mistake — a  grave  one, 
that  is.  And  the  remembrance  of  this  has  taught 
him — no  easy  matter — to  know  real  illness  when 
he  sees  it  with  a  pretty  high  degree  of  certainty. 
So  the  bad  cases  he  sets  on  one  side.  For  if 
possible  they  must  be  admitted ;  and  at  any 
rate  they  must  be  seen  by  the  house-surgeon  or 
house-physician  on  duty.  While  as  for  the 
rest,  they  may  be  given  at  once  the  necessary  pill, 
or  a  desirable  draught  from  that  decorated  urn 
in  the  corner — there's  a  certain  irony  in  that 
particular  wreath  of  holly — or  despatched,  with 
out-patient  cards,  to  appropriate  special  depart- 
ments. 

And  all  this  time  there  is  flowing  from  him  to 
the  dressers  a  little  stream  of  wounds  to  be 
stitched,  torn  scalps  to  be  cleaned,  and  sprains 
and  strains  to  be  temporarily  bandaged.  Odder 
things  too  may  be  demanding  their  youthful 
attention.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a  genial  but, 
alas,  beery  Irishwoman  of  vast  embonpoint,  whose 
wedding-ring  has  been  jammed  into  her  ringer, 
and  must  at  all  costs  be  removed.  Alcoholic 
invocations  are  breathed  into  the  dresser's  ear 
as  he  files  patiently  at  this  brass  emblem  of 


260         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

married  unity.  Sure,  darlin',  she  tells  him,  if  she 
could  only  be  rid  of  her  ould  man  as  aisy,  she'd 
be  another  woman  to-morrer,  she  would.  While 
here,  sitting  next  her,  is  a  dark-eyed  twelve-year- 
old,  holding  out  a  pathetic  little  toe  that  has 
been  stamped  upon  by  a  passing  dray-horse. 
It  is  attached  to  a  very  grimy  foot  that  was  not, 
one  fears,  the  only  inhabitant  of  the  stocking 
that  contained  it.  And  the  dresser  is  not  sure 
if  the  bone  is  broken.  She  has  the  countenance 
of  a  tear-stained  Madonna  ;  but  her  language, 
when  he  twists  her  toe,  becomes  positively  lurid. 
The  other  women  titter  or  are  shocked,  the 
Sister  rebukes  her,  and  young  white-coat  is  called 
up  for  reference.  He  likes  the  little  girl,  and 
gives  her  some  chocolate,  whereupon  she  stifles 
half  her  sobs  and  most  of  her  profanity.  Yes,  it's 
a  fracture  all  right.  Does  the  dresser  know  how 
to  put  on  a  poroplastic  splint  ?  The  dresser 
looks  a  little  uncertain.  So  white-coat  gives  him 
a  swiftly  helping  hand,  and  within  five  minutes 
is  removing  a  decayed  Semitic  molar  that  has 
been  giving  its  owner  schmerz  indescribable. 
Accompanying  this  gentleman  are  his  two  sisters, 
a  married  brother  with  his  wife  and  family,  and 
an  elderly  uncle,  all  of  whom  wail  incontinently 
to  the  general  discomfort.  Glancing  over  his 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  261 

shoulder,  young  white-coat  sends  briefly  for  a 
porter,  who  courteously  removes  them ;  and  is 
only  just  in  time,  having  extracted  the  tooth 
successfully,  to  avoid  the  happy  sufferer's  em- 
braces. He  has  never  hurried  ;  and  yet  by  the 
time  that  we  have  made  our  round  of  the  dressing- 
rooms  the  benches  are  empty,  and  he  has  dis- 
appeared to  his  pipe  and  his  arm-chair.  Can 
you  believe  that  but  four  years  ago  he  was 
throwing  chalk  about  the  dissecting-room,  and 
stamping  uproariously  during  lectures  ? 

This  wonder  has  my  hospital  performed. 
And  what  am  I  to  tell  you  of  the  Sister  who  has 
witnessed  it — whose  shrewd  eyes  have  beheld  so 
many  dressers  emerging  rawly  from  the  college 
or  from  Cambridge,  becoming  in  due  time 
even  as  our  white-clad  friend,  and  passing  hence, 
as  he  will  pass,  into  the  staid  gravity  of  the 
family  doctor  ? 

There's  a  time — fortunately  brief — in  the 
career  of  the  just-qualified  student  when  he  is  a 
little  inclined  to  assert  his  professional  supremacy. 
How  tenderly  she  watches  him  through  it  j 
and  how,  telling  him  all  things,  she  apparently 
tells  him  nothing !  I  wouldn't  like  to  say  how 
many  years  she  has  stood  there,  or  what  sights, 
humorous,  tragic,  unpaintably  indecent,  she  has 


262          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

witnessed  in  all  that  time.  And  you  could 
certainly  never  guess  them  for  yourself.  Let 
me  only  say  then  that  her  wisdom  is  more  than 
the  wisdom  of  many  physicians,  and  that  no 
gentler  fingers  have  touched  the  seamy  side  of 
life. 

And  yet,  I  suppose,  she  was  once  a  little  girl, 
shinning  up  the  orchard  trees  for  the  apples  at 
the  top.  And  she  can  still,  I  believe,  drop  a 
sentimental  tear  or  two  upon  the  last  page  of  a 
novel.  So  can  this  be  yet  another  miracle 
that  my  hospital  has  wrought  ?  Dear  me — 
and  we  have  got  no  further  than  the  receiving- 
room,  and  scarcely  even  thought  about  the 
patients. 

Sometimes  I  wonder  if  the  people  whose 
pennies  are  invited  to  keep  us  for  a  second  ever 
realise  the  full  significance  of  the  instant  that 
they  make  their  own.  Not  always,  I  think,  for 
even  I,  who  am  in  the  hospital  three  times  a  week, 
only  get  an  occasional  vision  of  it — chiefly  on  such 
days  as  these,  when  one  may  travel  its  wards  at 
large,  unforbidden  by  professional  etiquette. 
Do  they  know,  for  example,  that  under  the 
roof  of  the  out-patients'  department  there  are 
two  small  boys — open-mouthed  little  snorers  of 
yesterday,  sprawling  about  on  the  pavement 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  263 

inviting  trouble — whose  tonsils  during  that 
moment  have  been  successfully  removed  from 
them  ?  And  can  they  perceive,  in  the  same 
measure  of  time,  a  dozen  blocked-up  ears  and 
noses  being  skilfully  examined  by  electrical 
illumination  ?  Do  they  realise  that,  simultane- 
ously with  all  this,  eight  short-sighted  persons 
are  being  tested  for  spectacles,  and  two  more 
being  operated  upon  for  squint ;  that  three 
men  with  diseased  skins  are  being  prescribed  for 
in  another  part  of  the  building,  and  that  four 
women  who  were  being  consumed  with  lupus 
are  now  being  cured  with  light ;  that  a  poor 
servant-girl  is  under  gas  while  her  yet  poorer 
teeth  are  being  removed,  and  that  three  others 
are  being  fitted  with  nerveless  new  ones ;  that 
a  little  damsel  with  a  dislocated  hip  is  having 
it  put  in  plaster  ;  that  an  elderly  and  rheumatic 
cab-driver  is  being  helped  with  radiant  heat ; 
and  that  some  four  hundred  men  and  women 
of  all  descriptions  are  waiting  their  turn  for 
treatment  ?  My  numbers  are  conservative ; 
but,  even  so,  does  the  gentleman  on  the  under- 
ground railway  platform  realise  (to  be  merely 
sordid)  that  during  his  second  some  five  hundred 
pounds'  worth  of  free  operations  are  in  progress  ? 
Does  he  visualise  the  resultant  satisfaction  in  all 


264         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

those  squalid  little  homes,  the  domestic  relief, 
the  returning  efficiency,  the  rolled-away  anxiety, 
the  dawning  happiness  ?  And  does  he  remember 
that  he  has  as  yet  peeped  into  but  one  department 
of  the  great  hospital  that  he  is  supporting  ? 

But  really,  on  a  Christmas  Day  one  shouldn't 
be  thinking  about  these  things ;  and  you  must 
put  them  down  to  an  elderly  garrulity,  or  as 
being,  if  you  will,  in  the  nature  of  a  half-sorrowful 
farewell.  For  by  next  Christmas,  alas,  my  wards 
will  have  ceased  to  know  me.  The  twenty 
years'  span  allotted  to  me  will  have  come  to  its 
close ;  and  even  to-day,  at  a  corner  of  the 
corridor,  I  overheard  a  hazarded  guess  at  my 
successor. 

So  after  a  long  pilgrimage  through  gay  and 
chattering  wards — they  were  all  gay  this  after- 
noon, only  you  mustn't  look,  perhaps,  at  those 
quiet  corners — we  at  last  found  Esther  and  her 
party  in  the  gayest  of  them  all.  I  will  call  it 
this,  as  being  a  very  complete  disguise  if  you 
should  ever  quote  me  to  the  Sister  of  another. 
And  here  a  troupe  of  residents  was  delivering  a 
little  series  of  songs  and  dances,  to  the  complete 
delight  of  some  forty  patients  and  a  background 
of  visitors  and  nurses.  Its  members  were  par- 
ticularly hilarious.  I  fancy  indeed  that  they 


To  Hugh  P on f rex  265 

must  have  primed  themselves  with  a  little  previous 
champagne — a  very  little,  and  you  must  remember 
that  at  least  two  of  them  had  been  up  for  most 
of  the  night.  But  nobody  noticed  this ;  and  Claire, 
at  any  rate,  was  very  thoroughly  taken  by  storm. 

"  Won't  they  come  back  presently  ?  "  she 
asked. 

But  the  Sister  shook  her  head.  If  Claire 
wanted  to  see  them  again  she  must  go  off  to  some 
other  ward.  I  saw  her  turn  to  Tom. 

"  Shall  we  ?  "  she  said,  and  they  slipped  away 
together.  But  before  they  went  I  heard  her 
calling  his  particular  attention  to  one  of  the 
players,  "the  second  from  the  left,"  she  whis- 
pered, "  the  awfully  handsome  one  "  —  a  new 
note  for  Claire  ?  Yes,  just  a  little  new. 

And  so  we  left  it  at  last,  driving  out  into  the 
street  through  a  small  crowd  of  eager,  white- 
faced  children,  for  some  of  whom,  no  doubt,  its 
walls  were  as  the  walls  of  Paradise.  It  was  quite 
dark,  with  a  blur  of  rain  upon  the  carriage  win- 
dows ;  and  for  a  minute  or  two  the  hospital, 
with  its  long  rows  of  lighted  wards,  towered 
dimly  upon  our  left. 

"  Just  like  a  great  big  liner,"  said  Claire,  who 
had  been  down  to  Southampton  when  Molly  and 
Rupert  sailed.  And  so  indeed  one  could  imagine 


266         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

ti — lifting  its  strong  sides  above  all  these  crowded 
roof-tops,  with  unshaken  bows,  and  Hope  upon 
the  bridge,  and  Comfort,  at  least,  to  minister  in 
its  cabins. 

"  And  yet  there's  something  awful  in  it  too," 
said  Jeanie  Graham. 

"  Chiefly,"  explained  Horace  philosophically, 
"  because  we're  going  home  ourselves  to  an  ex- 
cellent Christmas  dinner." 

"  And  happen  to  be  feeling  rather  well,"  said 
Esther. 

"  And  partly,  I  suppose,"  added  Jeanie,  "  be- 
cause just  now  we're  looking  at  it  from  the  out- 
side." 

"  And  a  little  bit,"  I  guessed,  "  because  it 
stands,  in  a  sense,  for  Knowledge  with  a  big  K. 
And  there  are  times  when  we're  all  rather  afraid 
of  that — even  when  it  wants  to  do  us  good." 

"  But  we  run  to  it  in  the  end,"  smiled  Jeanie. 

Let  me  introduce  you  to  her  as  she  sits  op- 
posite to  me  in  the  brougham — or  to  so  much  of 
her  as  is  not  obscured  by  Claire,  who  is  dividing 
her  weight  between  Horace  and  his  wife-ap- 
parent. Strictly  speaking,  I  suppose,  she  is 
scarcely  to  be  described  as  pretty.  Her  cheek- 
bones are  the  leasx  shade  too  high,  and  her  eye- 
brows just  a  trifle  too  level.  Here  and  there  too 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  267 

her  skin,  still  clinging  to  its  Highland  brown,  is 
powdered  with  tiny  freckles ;  and  though  her 
nose  is  straight  enough,  a  purist  might  consider 
her  mouth  too  big,  and  her  chin  perhaps  a  little 
too  firm — but  very  pleasantly  so.  Her  hair  is 
dark  and  wavy,  and  in  its  natural  setting — a  grey 
tam-'o-shanter,  I  think,  and  the  tail  of  a  Scotch 
mist — might  well  contain  the  deep,  divine,  dark 
dayshine  of  the  poet.  And  indeed  I  have  been 
assured  that  it  docs.  I  have  left  her  eyes  to  the 
last,  because  at  present  she  is  standing  away  from 
them  a  little.  Regarded  as  mere  windows  to  her 
mind  they  are  well  opened,  clear,  and  grey.  But 
Horace,  who  has  seen  their  owner  leaning  out  of 
them,  could  no  doubt  describe  them  better.  And 
we  think  that  he's  a  fortunate  young  man. 

Our  only  other  guest  was  Wensley,  dragged  re- 
luctantly from  Chelsea.  His  year  has  had  some 
of  its  usual  disappointments.  His  big  work  wasn't 
finished  in  time  for  the  Academy,  and  is  still  in  his 
studio.  But  though  the  Chantrey  trustees  passed 
over  the  very  beautiful  bronze  that  he  did  send, 
he  has  sold  this  to  the  National  Gallery  at  Copen- 
hagen for  six  hundred  pounds,  and  has  spent,  in 
consequence,  a  fortnight  at  Whitby — his  first  holi- 
day, I  believe,  in  three  years,  since  his  invalid 
aunt  and  sister  absorb  most  of  his  usual  earnings. 


268          The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

He  always  looks  odd  and  uncomfortable  in  even- 
ing dress.  But  our  very  informal  table  generally 
sets  him  at  his  ease.  And  he  is  an  extreme 
favourite  with  both  Tom  and  Claire.  To-night 
he  remembered  one  of  Tom's  songs,  and  per- 
suaded him,  after  dinner,  to  deliver  it — with  a 
little  hesitation  at  first  (for  the  poor  boy  has 
still  got  some  scruples,  I  think),  but  ultimately 
to  his  saving  grace.  He  left  us  at  ten  o'clock, 
for  the  invalids'  sake,  by  which  time  Tom  and 
Claire  announced  themselves  to  be  feeling  rather 
sleepy,  without,  as  I  observed,  any  notable  pro- 
test from  Jeanie  and  Horace.  So  they  have  both 
gone  upstairs  to  bed  ;  or  at  least  I  had  thought 
so.  But  a  tentative  whisper  at  my  door-handle 
has  aroused  my  suspicions.  I  am  busy  writing  to 
Mr.  Pontrex,  so  that  I  shall  be  sure  not  to  hear 
anything  ;  and  slowly  the  crack  widens  between 
the  door-edge  and  the  architrave.  Across  the 
blackness  disclosed,  flashes  the  gleam  of  a  white- 
frocked  arm,  like  a  turning  trout  in  a  pool ;  and 
presently  a  brown  hand,  desperately  silent,  begins 
feeling  for  my  key.  I  look  at  it  apprehensively 
(for  I  have  become  a  little  nervous  on  this  point 
lately)  and  am  happily  relieved  to  find  it  ringless. 
I  must  be  very  quick. 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  269 

And  yet,  as  you  will  have  noticed,  even  Claire 
is  growing  up,  still  faithful  to  a  more  boisterous 
March,  but  now  and  then  holding  out  her  finger- 
tips to  May.  She  reposes,  as  you  may  remember, 
in  the  little  room  next  to  ours.  And  yesterday 
morning  Esther  called  me  from  my  shaving-glass. 
For  she  had  opened  the  door  between,  to  discover 
that  Claire  had  flown.  Whither  we  could  guess 
very  easily,  as  she  was  even  then  hammering  Tom 
with  her  pillow.  But  there,  balanced  face  down- 
wards on  the  edge  of  the  bolster,  lay  a  momen- 
tarily forgotten  photograph.  Esther  touched  it 
with  a  smile. 

"  D'you  think  we  ought  to  ?  "  she  asked.  And 
then  she  drew  back.  But  at  that  moment  a  rather 
more  vehement  bump  than  its  predecessors  shook 
the  wall  and  floor  so  thoroughly  that  the  photo 
slid  down  upon  the  sheets,  poised  itself  for  a  second 
upon  its  edge,  and  then  dropped  over,  to  reveal 
the  very  debonair  figure  of  Mr.  George  Alexander 
as  the  gallant  Rudolf  Rassendyll.  We  looked  at 
one  another,  and  laughed — but  only  a  little.  And 
then  Esther  restored  the  picture  to  its  resting- 
place. 

Some  day  we  shall  meet  him  in  the  Park,  and 
Claire  will  behold  a  very  genial,  middle-aged 
gentleman,  a  little  inclined  to  be  plump.  But 


270         The  Corner  of  Harley  Street 

he  won't  be  Rudolf  Rassendyll.    And  what  will 
happen  to  his  likeness  ? 


"  She'll  put  it  in  her  bottom  drawer,"  smiles 
Esther,  leaning  over  me  as  I  write,  "  and  it'll 
become  part  of  somebody  else." 

She  drops  a  kiss  upon  my  occiput. 

"  And  now  you  must  come  to  bed,"  she  adds, 
"  or  perhaps  to-morrow  morning  you'll  be  tired." 

And  by  this,  of  course,  she  means  "cross," 
though  possibly,  by  some  blessed  dispensation,  she 
imagines  that  she  doesn't.  For  long  (as  I  am 
minded  to  tell  you,  Hugh  Pontrex),  long  before 
she's  married,  a  woman  has  made  a  garment  for 
the  man  who  is  to  wed  her — a  beautiful  and 
rather  princely  garment,  and  fortunately  a  bigger 
one  than  is  usually  required.  Because  then,  you 
see,  she  has  only  to  take  a  tuck  in  it — and  forget 
about  it — and  there's  her  man  clad  in  his  coat, 
just  as  she  had  always  dreamed  that  he  would 
come  to  her.  Most  women,  I'm  afraid,  have  to 
deepen  this  tuck  until  there's  no  more  stuff  that 
they  can  turn.  And  by  that  time,  perhaps,  we 
have  begun  to  suspect  that  there  has  been  some 
tampering  with  our  property. 

"  D'you  mean  to  say,"  we  inquire  bitterly, 
"  that  we've  grown  out  of  it  already  ?  " 


To  Hugh  Pontrex  271 

And  then  it  is  that  they  must  needs  explain 
to  us,  with  dewy  eyes  and  hands  upon  our  shoul- 
ders, how  it's  only  the  same  dear  garment  still — 
three  times  as  thick. 

"  What  nonsense,"  says  Esther  above  my 
shoulder. 

"  The  garment  ?  "  I  ask. 

"  No,  the— the  tuck." 

But  she  looks  a  little  conscious. 

Ever  yours, 

P.  H. 


PLYMOUTH 

WILLIAM    BRHNDON    AND   SON,  LIMITED 
PRINTERS 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

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